Mako
by Peptuck
Summary: Within the depths of corruption, squalor, and evil, one mercenary fights a war alongside a ragtag band of rebels against the faceless corporate enemy of Shinra Inc. Yet, an even darker evil lurks beyond..... An indepth novelization of Final Fantasy VII.
1. Prologue: Silenced Night

__

_Standard Issue Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII is the property of Squaresoft. All characters, locations, and concepts except for original creations belong to them._

* * *

_**Mako: A Final Fantasy VII Novelization**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**Part One: Midgar**_

_**Prologue: Silenced Night**_

Green, sparkling embers floated lazily in the air, billowing about in the faint breeze. She crouched in front of the conduit, reaching out and touching one of the tiny motes of light, absorbing the green energy into her hand. She frowned as the Mako flowed into her, and she caught a momentary jolt of ideas and emotions, jumbled and confused. The compression and modification had corrupted and changed the energies, ruining the inherent harmony.

She shook her head and stood up, leaving the damaged conduit and the leaking Mako behind. Most people would avoid leaking Mako because of the danger inherent with the substance, but she didn't. She wasn't afraid of the Mako, though its presence saddened her as she felt the pain and suffering inflicted by the "miracle of modern science." But . . . it was this substance that had given birth to her city.

She stepped out of the alley, a basket of flowers hanging idly from her left hand, and looked up and down the street. As always, this section of Midgar was lit by yellow lamps and blazing neon lights. People meandered along the sidewalks of the main streets, and cars drove past, moving through the streets with a whiff of noxious gasoline and Mako trailing in their wake. The apartment buildings and businesses glowed brightly in the dark of night, the city vibrating with the buzz of life.

From where she stood, she couldn't see much of the city, just the next row of apartment buildings in Sector Eight. They stretched up into the night, like brown teeth, stained with pollution from the nearby industrial factories. The city of Midgar was the home of the headquarters of Shinra Inc., the worldwide industrial conglomerate that effectively ruled the world. Only the far-off land of Wutai had ever successfully resisted Shinra's control, and that just for a scant decade, before they too had been crushed.

The corporation was the pinnacle of corruption and the worship of money, a powerful, faceless monstrosity whose nest further exemplified these sordid ideals. That was what Midgar was: the product of aggressive expansion and the rape of both the natural world and mankind, raised on the backs of the poor and oppressed and fueled by the energies of the planet itself. It was Shinra's cancerous crown, the largest city in the world, where all their power was centered and from which their power had extended to encompass the world. It was huge, awe-inspiring, and at the same time, an abomination.

But for her, Midgar was also home.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk and walked down the noisy street toward the topside Sector Two train station. The light played across her features, reflecting off her pale, almost milky-white skin, long brown hair, and vibrant green eyes as she moved through the hustle and bustle of Midgar's night. However, she paused, listening, for over the din of the city street, she thought she faintly heard the sound of conflict, of distant sirens sounding near the border between Sector One and Sector Eight.

* * *

In the shadows, he listened. Darkness wrapped around his form as he stood silently in the black lightless stretches of the Midgar night. The shadow was his home, or at least, it had been for so long that he had grown accustomed to its constant presence, wrapping around this body like a thick, endless blanket of nothing. And in this emptiness, he waited, biding his time, assembling the pieces. 

Through rock, metal, earth, sky, and time, he had listened intently. Every second had been spent gathering the wisdom and the knowledge he required, slowly spreading his influence and ascertaining the locations of the pieces. Bit by bit, he had found where his scattered components lay, spread out by the workings of men.

_Men._ Such a vile term. A race of pompous, arrogant fools. The descendants of a decrepit race, a swarm of insects stretching across the face of this planet, an infestation that drained the power of the world for their own ends. A purposeless collection of worthless, resource consuming maggots.

_Well,_ he mused with a smile. _Not for long._

A few steps needed to be taken before the process could begin. He was strong, but not perfect. He couldn't achieve his true capabilities until all had been restored. The individuals carrying his components were mere pittances, not enough to bother seeking out on his own. They would find their way to him, with but a few exceptions. What he needed lay ahead; the greater portion of himself was ensconced in the center of this stinking human construct. It had taken him too long to find it . . . Did those fools really think that hiding it in the center of their city would stop him?

It had taken him five years to recover and seek out the pieces. It had taken ages before that for him to be rediscovered. And it had taken eons before that for him to finally arrive at a place where his power could be made manifest. He understood the concept of patience. A few days' time was all he needed. He would remain there in the darkness of the city of men, listening intently for the one moment he needed, and then he would strike. And after that . . . .

After that, the world of men would soon see its end, by his hands. And in their deaths, he would rise as a new power. With the death of men, he would become a god, as was his destiny.

Soon . . . .

* * *

In the dead of night, the Shinra corporate military police found themselves immersed in yet another endless night of boredom. A half-dozen men patrolled the train station directly outside the Sector Eight Military Depot, an arms and equipment storage facility located right outside the Number One Mako Reactor. The reactors were scattered around the exterior of the upper plate of Midgar, massive and mighty edifices that served as monuments of Shinra' power, and sources of that same power. 

These military police had a special purpose: they inspected all trains arriving at this station, and they, along with a few additional platoons of Shinra regular infantry, were tasked with providing security both for the depot and the exterior of the Mako reactor. The reactor itself had its own internal security force, automated defenses, guard animals, and specially-shielded soldiers. These troops outside the reactor we not such men; they wore the standard blue uniforms, armor, and face and head-covering helmets of Shinra regular infantry.

A supply train carrying the next shift was expected to arrive at midnight, and the guards perked up as they heard the distant rumbling of the vehicle coming in, a few minutes early. They moved out onto the platform, watching as the older, converted Mako-driven vehicle rapidly closed in with the station, applying its brakes as it neared. A few of the men made comments about being glad their shift was over, and a pair stepped into one of the guard houses, one to retrieve his extra gear he had stowed, and another to send a message to the guards inside the depot that their relief had arrived.

The old train's wheeled screeched viciously, steadily bringing the vehicle to a halt, and the guards waited patiently for the doors on the side to open, and for the soldiers inside to step out. After a couple of seconds, no one emerged, and the military police glanced at each other, confused.

They caught a glimpse of motion on top of one of the train cars, and looked up in time to see a man, a huge bear of a warrior, leap down, using his sheer bulk and weight to crush one of the guards under his massive frame.

Between two of the train cars, another pair of figures emerged, holding sub-machineguns in hand. The two men quickly fired three-round bursts into another pair of guards as they grabbed for their slung rifles. The bullets struck at their throats and mouths, where their helmets did little to protect the soldiers, and sent them spinning to the ground, instantly killed. The fourth guard raised his rifle, but then felt his chin being pulled back, and a stabbing pain diving into the back of his neck, slicing up into his skull and brain stem. He toppled to the pavement, his rifle clattering to the ground, the assassin's knife sliding out of his neck as he did so. The killer, a young woman with brown hair, gray vest, and black slacks, her forehead covered with a red bandana, quickly moved into the shadows cast by the lights of the train station.

The other two men, clad in what looked like cast-off military gear, vests, bandanas, boots, and gloves, moved out from the train, sweeping the platform with their weapons. One was hefty and portly, who could generously be called fat, while the other was almost rail thin and athletic. They moved past the big, heavyset warrior, who watched the platform as well. The last man of the team, the rearguard, and potentially the biggest troublemaker of the bunch, dropped from a car further back. He waved a signal, indicating it was clear, and moved up.

As he stepped into the light, one could see his features. He wore a somewhat tattered dark blue uniform, pants and a loose shirt, over which was a thick belt. A metal shoulder guard covered his left shoulder, and a bandoleer cut across his chest, connecting to the heavy leather sheath on his back, which held up his massive sword. Spiked blonde hair flew wildly as he jogged across the platform, gloved right hand over his shoulder and clutching the handle of his heavy blade, his black boots pounding on the pavement. His left hand, encased in a heavy black glove and featuring a large iron bracer that ran halfway up his forearm, remained empty.

The leader of the intruders was impressed with the calm, almost bored demeanor in the young man's thin face, as if this was as simple as a trip to the grocery store. He would have been handsome, excepting his rugged features and blazing azure eyes, orbs that glowed ominously like angry blue-white coals. The expression within those eyes was far from welcoming; in fact there was a dangerous substance behind them, as if this man was a lethal weapon waiting to strike out.

The door into one of the rooms adjacent to the platform flew open, and two Shinra soldiers rushed out, rifles in hand. They spotted the blonde man first and spun on him, raising their rifles.

"Freeze!" one of the two military police screamed.

It was the last word he ever spoke.

The man seemed to bolt forward, crossing the ten feet between the trio in a heartbeat, and drew his sword off his back. The two soldiers caught a glimpse of the mighty weapon, a huge, solid steel blade a foot across and five feet in length, long and straight with angular, square-like edges. Then the sword flew across impossibly fast, the razor edge chopping into the soldier on the left, the one who had spoken. The weight behind the sword and the awe-inspiring force behind the slash sent the blade clean through the armored soldier, slicing him in half, blood and guts splashing from his bisected body. The warrior pivoted slightly, hacking across a second time, and chopped down the other man with a one-handed backhand stroke, launching his broken, bisected body across the platform.

"Not bad," rumbled the big man, looking over his hired mercenary's handiwork. The huge, dark-skinned man known as Barret Wallace gestured behind him with his good arm, his right hidden in the sleeve of the heavy trenchcoat that wrapped around his massive, plug-like body. He looked like nothing short of a humanoid boulder, a solid rock of muscle and power, topped by a large head featuring a crew-cut hairstyle and a thick, closely shaved black beard and mustache.

"Others're securing the entrance to the depot," he quickly said in a thick, rough accent. "Let's move 'fore they find trouble!" Barret spun around and ran across the platform, moving with speed that belied his massive frame, and the mercenary followed him. They ducked into a stairwell that rose up above the platform, opening onto a raised paved walkway that bypassed the depot and led directly toward the Mako reactor. The pair could hear alarms sounding throughout the complex as word of the sudden attack quickly began to spread. Time was of the essence for the rebels.

The pair quickly arrived at the perimeter of the Mako reactor complex, marked by a huge twelve-foot high wall towering over them, with wide, thick metal doors protecting the entrance. The brown-haired woman, Jessie, if the mercenary remembered correctly, was elbow deep in a control panel beside the door, penlight clutched between her teeth as she dug into the wiring. Around her were the other two men, the fat one covering the platform they had arrived on with his gun, while the thin rebel watched the route from the storage depot, a passage nearby that could allow half a platoon of enemy soldiers to charge them without any trouble.

"Almos' go' 't," Jessie hissed, her words slurred by the object in her mouth.

"The hell?" Barret demanded as he stepped onto the platform. "I told ya'll to never move in a group!"

"Not much room, boss!" responded the portly man with a grin. "Jessie's almost got the door open, anyway."

"A single damn grenade coulda taken all ya'lls' asses out," Barret complained.

The thin man glanced back at the mercenary, giving him another look. He noted the bloody sword the man carried, flipped over into an overhand grip and held out behind him, letting the gore drip off it.

"Damn, never thought I'd see a member of SOLDIER and live to tell about it," he commented with a grin.

"SOLDIER?" Jessie muttered, surprised. This was news to her. "SOLDIER's wi' Shinra. They're 'r en'my!"

"_Was_ in SOLDIER," the thin man replied. "Now he's with us, right?" Barret nodded. "Hey, never caught your name," he added, looking back at the mercenary.

"Cloud," the merc replied coolly, stepping past the thin man and looking down the passage, eyes narrowing. He tapped his sword against the corner of the wall they stood beside, knocking some of the blood off. "Cloud Strife, ex-soldier, First Class."

"Nice," the man responded with a grin, glad to have a competent ally along. "The fat guy's Wedge Lucas, and I'm George Biggs-"

"Did I ask for your name?" Cloud responded coldly, shocking both Biggs and Wedge. "I don't care who you guys are. I'm just here for the pay, don't forget that." The two rebels were still surprised, when Barrett slapped both of them on the shoulders with his left hand.

"Look alive, fools!" he muttered. The two rebels realized the coming threat an instant before the squad of Shinra soldiers charging down the passage opened fire. Cloud had already rolled around the corner, out of the line of fire, while the other rebels ducked and dove for safety, Barret grabbing Jessie and dragging her out of the line of fire.

"I'm not done with the door!" she protested.

"But they'd be done with ya faster if ya stayed out there!" Barret responded, bullets ripping past the exposed position outside the door. Biggs poked his head around the corner for a glimpse, and ducked back as bullets peppered his position.

"Too many," he quickly reported. "Too far away to use grenades, either."

"Arright," Barret muttered, grinning as he patted his right arm with his left. "Looks like I'll need t' show 'em my little friend!"

"No need," muttered Cloud, his voice barely audible over the gunfire. The rebels looked around, and then up, to see Cloud perched on the wall they were hiding behind, having vaulted up there when the attack had begun. "I'll flank them." He spun before anyone could say anything and dashed over the wall toward the Shinra position.

"He's crazy," Wedge commented, and Barret chuckled.

"Hope he don't die before we get inside. We may need 'im!"

Cloud moved unseen along the top of the wall, closing in on the Shinra soldiers. They had stopped charging, and were steadily advancing, firing in staggered bursts as they walked forward, conserving their ammunition. He was surprised to count only five of them, but the sheer volume of fire from the small squad had quickly won them fire superiority, forcing the rebels to take cover. That gave Shinra the initiative.

Of course, had they been members of SOLDIER they would have been covering all flanks the enemy could come from, including overhead. That tactical oversight was what sealed their fates as Cloud focused his mind for a moment. On his bracer, a green light flared, and white mist gathered around his wrist. He jabbed his hand at the lead Shinra soldier, and a stream of ice shot forth, instantly resolving itself into a series of icy shards that slammed into the lead soldier. The ice punched through his armor an impaled the man with a dozen frigid blades, which instantly shattered, unleashing lethal cold throughout the man's body, that froze his organs solid.

The soldier, already wounded from icy shards, was killed instantly by the ice within his body. The other Shinra troops whirled, bringing their weapons to bear on the direction the ice had come from, but in that instant, Cloud had already dropped into their midst, his massive, bloody sword chopping down through the shoulder and out the hip of another soldier, leaving him in two bloody chunks. Cloud whirled, his sword lashing out and biting into the gut of another man, slicing him open, and ripping through the torso of another soldier dropping into a crouch, breaking him apart. The last man backed up, amazed at the speed of this demon-possessed warrior, and Cloud whirled on him, slamming into him with his shoulder and crushing him against the wall. Cloud's head moved back, then snapped forward like a striking snake, his forehead crashing into the soldier and crushing his faceplate. Cloud then stepped back and chopped his sword at the dazed soldier's torso, the horizontal cut ripping into the man's gut and burying the blade in the wall behind the Shinra soldier. The man's bisected corpse fell to the pavement over the crimson-splattered sword.

Cloud tapped his sword against the wall, knocking some of the blood off, and ran back to his allies' position, where Jessie had resumed her work, while the others stared at him in amazement.

"That was fast," Wedge remarked, and Cloud didn't respond.

"Not bad," Barret repeated, and a moment later, the door slid open, to Jessie's squeal of victory.

"Move it, move!" Barret quickly ordered, and the group filed into the Mako reactor's perimeter immediately, Cloud taking up the rear again. They dashed into the complex, the exterior sector consisting of several storage areas and external equipment that none of them could name, all gathered together in a confusing mix of twisted passages. Jessie paused by the door to shut it, and stuck a grenade into the control panel, before popping the pin. She ducked between the doors as they closed, and a split-second after the doors shut, the grenade blew, destroying the panel and cutting off the enemy reinforcements from coming in behind them.

Meanwhile, Barret, Biggs, and Wedge rushed through the narrow, twisting confines between the equipment and small buildings, eyes open and alert. They were not caught off-guard as they rounded a corner and almost walked into a squad of enemy soldiers and their leveled rifles.

Barret, rather than duck for cover (especially with the hated Shinra military so close) stepped into their midst and smashed his right arm down hard onto one soldier's head. There was a crash of metal on ceramic helmet, and the soldier's helmet caved in. Barret bulled through the enemy, roaring in battle frenzy as he jabbed another soldier in the gut with his meaty left hand, launching the man fifteen feet away. He whirled, right arm lashing out and pulverizing another soldier's right shoulder, sending the man sprawling to the pavement. Biggs and Wedge quickly split apart, moving to opposite sides of the walkway and firing around Barrett, their shots striking and dropping armored soldiers that tried to surround their raging leader. Within moments, all of the Shinra soldiers were down or incapacitated.

Cloud and Jessie ran up behind them a moment later, and Cloud glanced over the trio's handiwork.

"Ya ain't the only one who can kick ass, y'know!" Barret commented. There was a groan beside him, and Barret looked down, seeing one of the Shinra troopers still alive, but badly wounded. Before he could do anything, Biggs shouldered in beside him and pointed his gun at the man's face.

"This is for what you assholes did to the Midgar Owls, you Shinra bastard!" he snarled, and squeezed off a trio of shots into the man's faceplate, finishing the wounded soldier off.

"That necessary?" Barret muttered, and Biggs shook his head.

"No," he replied, and looked back at Barret, a grim smile on his face. "But it felt damn good."

"That's the spirit!" Barret responded, slapping his comrade on the shoulder. "No more wasting time! Move out!" They moved quickly through the twisting corridors and alleys, and soon found their way to a wide portal that led out onto the bridge that connected the outer complex to the Mako reactor itself. The bridge was a T-junction, one path leading toward the main rector itself and the other toward a sealed emergency exit that opened into the under-plate tunnels. Biggs and Wedge ran ahead of the group, Wedge huffing and puffing as he did so, pulling a detonating charge out his backpack as he ran. They moved toward the sealed door, while Jessie and Barrett broke off and ran down the path toward the reactor itself. Cloud looked up as he ran, seeing the massive tower of the reactor rising above.

It was a solid monolith of power, a single mountain-like structure with steam pouring out of the top of the building, the Shinra logo emblazoned on the side of the building. Below, the mercenary could see the reactor extend down to ground level, to the slums and barren ground hundreds of feet beneath them. Thousands of pinpricks of light, the homes of the slum denizens, could be picked out below. A fall from this height could be lethal . . . .

Cloud looked back up at the mountain of steel and corporate sin before him, and shook his head. He had a job to do. Time to blow this paper fort. He plunged into the entrance to the reactor. Within a few moments he had passed through a couple of empty hallways, and encountered Barret, covering Jessie as she was opening another sealed doorway.

"Its gonna take a sec," Barret informed Cloud. There were a few moments of silence, and he glanced back at his hired help. "Ya been in one of these before?" Cloud nodded.

"Then ya know why we're doin' this, right?" Barret asked. Cloud's response was to not respond at all. He had not been told of the group's intentions at the briefing before the mission, just what was expected of him.

"Mako's the lifeblood of the Planet, Cloud," Barret explained. "But Shinra keeps suckin' the life out with these weird machines! You know how the land around Midgar as all lifeless and barren, right? Its 'cause of these damn reactors! The whole Planet's gonna to end up like this if we don't stop it!"

"Not my problem," Cloud responded.

Barret muttered something under his breath and spun away, at the same moment that Jessie finished bypassing the door lock. The hydraulic locks hissed open and the next room opened up before them. They moved inside, and Jessie set to work on another set of locked doors. It took her only a few moments to bypass that lock, and the doors slid open, revealing a wide chamber with elevators at the far end.

Lined up in front of that set of elevators, however, were a dozen men in blue armor, with insectile helmets and heavy silver gauntlets on their lower arms, featuring razor-sharp claws. Each of them carried a standard Shinra sub-machinegun, and flanking the group of soldiers were several dog-like beasts, bloodthirsty genetic hybrids of monsters and canines.

"Reactor guards!" Barret shouted, and immediately raised his right hand, pointing it at the enemy. However, Cloud suddenly dashed forward, rushing across the distance in a heartbeat, blood-stained sword raised up in the air. Before the Shinra soldiers could react, Cloud was upon them, cleaving down with his mighty sword, and chopping one of the armored guards in half. He spun around, sword sweeping out, and chopped another guard in two from the waist. Cold ruthlessness was in his eyes as he tore into the guards with merciless abandon, viciously slicing apart any soldier within reach of his huge blade.

"Damn fool, get out o' th' way!" Barret hissed. He wasn't able to get a clear shot with Cloud dancing around like he was, but then the guard beasts began to move around the reactor guards, providing Barret with a clear target. He grinned, but then spun as Jessie shouted a warning.

"They're flanking, right side!" she alerted him, and he turned to see a doorway leading into an adjacent room, likely a control room, and out of it poured a dozen more Shinra soldiers, blue-armored regular infantry. They started to raise their rifles, when Barret's smile grew, and his left hand pulled back the sleeve on his heavy brown coat, revealing his weapon of choice.

From the middle of his forearm down, Barret Wallace's arm was replaced by machinery. A round disk, a cybernetic mount, started where his arm ended, and upon it was mounted a rotating, six-barreled 20mm chain gun, a weapon that should have been mounted on powered armor suits or tanks. Running from the weapon, up the sleeve of the coat, and then down around Barret's waist was a belt of thousands of rounds of ammunition, custom designed for his frame and for the weapon mounted on his arm.

The Shinra soldiers looked at the powerful, unique weapon, and then down at the smaller machineguns in their hands, and then back to Barret as he set his left hand against his gun-arm, bracing it.

"Whatcha' gonna do to me wit' them toys?" he snarled, a sadistic smile on his face, and the soldiers hesitated, staring down the barrels of the man's arm.

An instant later, the entire room was filled with the deafening _choom-choom-choom_ of the unbelievably devastating fire of his gun-arm as Barret cut loose, raining his righteous vengeance upon the awed Shinra troops.

Cloud's sword bit into the lungs of a retreating soldier, driving up out of his body like a blade through wet tissue paper. The raging mercenary whirled, slamming the sword's flat down onto a soldier directly behind him, using the sheer weight of the weapon to completely crush the man to the floor. Cloud's muscles flexed, and he seemed to effortlessly lift the sword off the corpse and spin around with it, the slash ripping into a third soldier and launching his separate halves across the room, a rain of blood flying in the blade's wake.

Nine of the twelve reactor guards were dead already, Cloud blasting through their ranks like a whirling dervish, his sword not only unstoppably powerful, but shockingly quick for such a massive weapon. None of the men could even begin to raise a defense against his assault, and those who were still alive were more concerned about retreating to a place where they could fire upon the madman in relative safety as opposed to a place within death's reach. Fortunately, the corpses piling around Cloud gave the guard beasts the openings they needed to slip amongst the survivors and launch an attack.

The fiendish, bloodthirsty, and well-trained hounds surrounded Cloud from four separate directions and attacked at virtually the same time, a pair going low at his legs while two others leapt into the air at his face and throat.

Cloud spun on one of the beasts as it leapt into the air, and his sword flew across to his left; not at the beast leaping at him, but at the one attacking his left flank, driving down into its head and back, crushing and slicing into its skull. Cloud pulled the blade free in an instant and slashed across with it, toward his right, and neatly severed the head of the second beast coming in at his right flank. The monster attacking him from in front was in mid-air as Cloud shot his blade up, the point rising into its path, and the monster impaled itself on his blade.

The fourth beast landed on Cloud's back and locked its teeth around the back of his neck, twisting and biting. Cloud grimaced as the creature thrashed on his neck, trying to break his spinal column, his blood running between its teeth. The mercenary flipped his sword into an overhand grip and swung it back over his head, slamming the butt of the handle into its upper back. The force behind the strike cracked the beast's backbone, and it squealed in pain as it released Cloud. The mercenary spun, left leg rising up into a kick that crushed the beast's ribs and launched it across the room to crash with a wet crunch against the wall.

Cloud sensed movement behind him, and spun around, his sword lashing out, and burying into the stomach of one of the surviving guards, attempting to gut him from behind with a combat knife while he was distracted. The sword sliced out through the man's backbone, sending him to the floor in a halfway-bisected heap of blood. The remaining pair of men fell back, and Cloud took a step forward, before halting and smiling darkly. The two hesitated, and in that moment, a knife drove into the back of one man's neck, digging up into his brain. An instant later, the other man raised his hands to his throat as blood poured from a slice tracing all the way across the front of his neck.

Jessie kicked out the man's knees, and he dropped to the floor, kneeling before her, and she stabbed the knife viciously into the back of his skull. She tore it free, and the man fell to the floor, dead. Cloud nodded in silent approval of the quick and efficient kills, while he put a hand to the bite wounds on the back of his neck. They would have killed an ordinary human, but Cloud wasn't ordinary, and they were already clotting over. Nothing serious.

The pair looked to Barret as silence filled the room, and saw that the huge man had dealt with his foes easily enough. A mangled pile of corpses and body parts were scattered at the far end of the room where the enemy soldiers had been rushing from, large, smoking bullet holes freshly imprinted in the walls. The heavy rounds had simply ripped through the hapless Shinra soldiers as they had been bunched together in the corridor leading from the control room. A few smoking holes marked Barret's coat, but none of them seeped blood. The heavy man turned back toward Cloud, and smiled, pumping his fleshy fist in the air in victory.

"Damn straight, Shinra bastards!" he declared, and the others nodded. Barret pounded his hand against his chest, and it released an oddly solid _thunk_ as it resounded off the body armor he wore beneath the coat. He spun toward his comrades.

"That's enough warmin' up!" he declared. "Reactor's down below! Let's blow this damn piece of junk to hell!" Jessie nodded, while Cloud stood by impassively, only pausing to tap the flat of his sword against the floor to knock some more of the blood off in that peculiar motion of his. The team's technical specialist rushed to the elevator door and, within seconds, had bypassed the security system and called the elevator up. The trio piled inside, and the elevator quickly descended.

"Hot hand with that sword," Barret remarked. Cloud nodded as Barrett started pacing around the small elevator. "We'll need it t' blow this place quick. Get down t' the pools, set the bomb, and get the hell out. That'll slow the bastards down. The reactors suck out all the life little by little. At this rate, there'll be nothin' left."

"I said I didn't care," Cloud replied, and Barret shook his head.

"The Planet's dyin', Cloud!" he snarled. "Don'tcha even give a damn?"

"All I do care about is getting out of here before SOLDIER, the Roboguards, and the entire Shinra military comes crashing down on our heads," Cloud responded. "I can't get paid if I'm dead."

"Son of a . . . ." Barret muttered, looking away, his fist trembling. Beside him, Jessie said nothing, though she'd heard all of the conversation. The differences between the two were blatantly obvious.

The elevator opened a few moments later, at ground level. The three intruders stepped out, Barret sweeping the area with his gun-arm to ensure no threats were present. The air stank of Mako, a foul smell like burnt rubber with a slight bit of rotten cheese mixed in. They were standing on a tall, concrete tower-like structure overlooking a wide construction and shipping area. A series of narrow staircases led down to the ground floor, and Cloud took the lead, knowing where to go from here.

Within moments the group was on the ground and heading through a doorway marked "Reactor Maintenance". They stepped out onto a narrow walkway overlooking a vast circular chamber, filled with thousands of pipes ranging from thin, narrow pipes the size of Jessie's fingers to huge cylinders that trucks could drive through. The Mako stench was even stronger in this room, and the intruders' ears were filled with the thrumming of machinery, the vibrations of which shook them to the bone.

"Jessie!" Barret shouted over the din as he looked around the chamber. Far below, hundreds of feet beneath them, was a vast pool of glowing light, shifting colors from blue to green and white constantly. It was raw Mako energy waiting to be processed; untreated, the energy was dangerous to be around for a long time. They couldn't stay long.

"Cover this door!" Barret ordered. "Keep it open for us!" She nodded, and stayed near the entrance, as Cloud looked over the chamber below. He took particular note of a concrete bridge that spanned the wide chamber far below, only about fifty feet above the raw Mako pool.

"How the hell we gettin' down there?" Barret asked, and Cloud didn't immediately answer.

"There are maintenance ladders," Cloud said after a moment, and gestured to a series of ladders running down among the pipes. "The work crews have to get to the pipes somehow. We use them to get down to the bridge at the bottom and the vent shaft, and set the bomb in there."

"Gotcha," Barrett replied, nodding. "Let's move!"

For all his bulk, Barret kept proving his agility, easily keeping up with Cloud as they dropped down ladders and moved across pipes, before finally arriving at the lowest bridge spanning the chasm. They hurried across, Barret reaching into his coat and taking out a small bomb. It was a light explosive, intended to knock out an armored vehicle at most, but the raw, unrefined Mako would amplify the explosion. Their bomb was the spark in the powder keg of this reactor, and the key was the vent shaft at the end of the bridge. Once the bomb was dropped in, it would go straight into the Mako, and once it detonated . . . .

"Suck on this shit, Shinra bastards," Barret growled with a grin as handed the bomb to Cloud. The mercenary crouched over the vent shaft, and quickly typed in the sequence of numbers, giving them a total of ten minutes before the bomb went off. Once he was finished, Cloud synchronized his watch with the bomb's timer, opened the cover on the shaft, and moved to drop the bomb into it, when an alarm resounded over the din of machinery. Barret spun, looking around, weapon up.

"They find us?" he asked, and Cloud shook his head as he shoved the bomb into the hole and slammed the lid shut. No going back now.

"Shinra already knows we're here," Cloud replied. "The vent must have had an alarm on it."

"Alarm for what?" Barret asked.

He got his answer an instant later.

* * *

-

* * *

Oh shit son. Peptuck's doing it again. 

Its been a long time coming. I was first considering writing this a long time ago, back when I first started writing my FFVIII novelization, The Gunblade Saga. The idea was suggested to me by someone, and I joked that I might do an FFVII novelization when I finished Gunblade. The idea was suggested to me again and again as I wrote, and now that I finished Gunblade, my mind started to churn out ideas for an FFVII novelization.

"That's crazy!" I thought, and even more so because I already had a pseudo-novelization of FFVII in the works, Bittersweet Synthesis. But the idea kept nagging me, and I wondered if I could really do it. Write an FFVII novel? Maybe. I had to get over some humps, among them the fact that I had two other fics in the works, and also the simple fact that I, in general, hated Cloud as a character. I didn't like him much in FFVII due to his relative blandness of personality; he had an amazing backstory, but aside from that, there was . . . nothing else. He was boring, even if he was cool. Back during the first few scenes, in the Mako reactor and up until he fell in Sector Five, and even after that, up until the escape from Midgar, Cloud was cool. But then he started to wuss out a bit, in my opinion. I liked badass Cloud, and I didn't like Cloud after that. I grew to hate the after-Midgar Cloud.

Thus, it is a silly irony that, as I write this, Cloud may in fact be the toughest and most hardcore character I've ever written (even moreso that Squall and Seifer in Gunblade and Chimera). I'm applying my own take on Cloud, an approach that actually makes me eager to write him. Of course, I will take my own approach to other characters as well, and will apply liberal interpretations and originality to various scenes in the game, correcting some of the silly stuff and whatnot. I think I'm uniquely suited to this kind of project, considering I've already completed one FF novelization. Here's hoping I get another done just as well! There will be some similarities to what was written in Synthesis as, hell, they are much the same thing, but with different characters, but I will branch out and write stuff uniquely suited to FFVIII in Synthesis.

Fully expect me to be a bit creative with some characters. FFVII is a lot more...kooky than FFVIII is, so I might play around a bit with a few characters.

Advent Children and Lost Souls will not have a direct bearing on this fic. AC's physics are...heh. Awesome, but not how I want to portray my fight scenes here. And I don't consider Lost Souls canon. (Sephiroth JUMPED. No. NOT COOL. That and, y'know, I haven't seen the whole thing :P) Some elements and storyline details from AC might be shown, but for the most part this fic will stand alone from later FFVII "attachments".

Story title? Mako? Yep. I had a much more pretentious title planned, but after a lot of thought and consideration, I distilled the core essence of FFVII to that simple two-syllable word. Mako. Its what started FFVII, its what ended FFVII. The entire story really revolves around that. The power and blood of the Planet.

Mako.

Hold on tight, folks. Not even I'm sure about this one. Has Peptuck bitten off more than he can chew? I sure as hell hope so. Makes it all the more fun that way!

Until the first chapter!


	2. Flawless Cowboy

_**Chapter One: Flawless Cowboy**_

Barret was expecting enemy soldiers, but what appeared was far larger and more intimidating. From somewhere above, hidden among the pipes, a massive, crimson-painted war machine was stirring, a whip-like tail flashing about beneath it as it awoke at the hands of the alarms that sounded around it. The machine unfolded itself, and released the clamps holding it in place, dropping toward the bridge below and crashing down right in front of the two intruders.

It was huge, over fifteen feet tall, painted a blood-red metal and featuring a scorpion-like tail as long as it was tall, tipped with a pointed, cannon-like "stinger." Six armored, spider-like legs supported its massive frame, set into a lower abdomen that the tail was attached to as well. Above this was a humanoid torso, though it lacked any "head' to speak of. Its arms were actually long machineguns, and on its chest were a set of glowing green sensors.

"M23-55A7 model," Cloud muttered under his breath. "Guard Scorpion. Didn't think Shinra still used things this outdated to defend their reactors."

The green sensors activated, and a cone of blue and green light poured over the pair where they stood.

"The hell?" Barret asked, and Cloud grabbed him and pulled him aside, out of the beam's path. An instant later machinegun fire poured over where he had been standing, thundering blasts of fire that tore up the concrete beneath his feet.

"Targeting sensor!" Cloud warned, drawing his sword. "That tin can is old enough that it still uses visible targeting sensors! Keep out of the beam's path and it won't see you!"

"How do we kill it?" Barret demanded. "We ain't got time to fool around! The bomb's gonna blow!"

"We - move!" Cloud shouted as the tracking sensor fell over them again. Heavy machinegun fire ripped past them as the two fighters dove aside on the narrow platform, concrete and metal screaming around them as the robot released a hellish firestorm on their position.

"Not much room to dodge," Barret said quickly, and Cloud nodded.

"It's a mecha," Cloud continued. "The key to killing any mecha is to destroy its legs. Knock it off-balance with ranged attacks, then hit it up close. Disable the legs and finish it off." Barret nodded in understanding, and they had to split apart as the sensor tracked them, locking on again. Machinegun fire ripped into their position, but they managed to escape relatively unscathed, excepting a few shrapnel wounds that were little more than insect stings.

"I'll cover you!" Barret roared over the gunfire, and raised his arm, leveling it at the robot. His gun-arm erupted with flashes and unleashed a hellish thunder as he ripped into his target. The 20mm bullets bored into the machine's armor, launching sparks from its torso as they shattered or bounced off. Several did manage to penetrate its hull, however, ripping apart electronics and components within the war machine. The tracking sensor closed in on him, however, and Barret dove forward underneath it, the sensor passing right over his body.

Cloud took advantage of the momentary distraction to close in. He knew he wouldn't have much time once he got close; this model was also equipped with short-range motion sensors just in case anyone got beneath the weapon's long-ranged sensor scope. His heavy sword slashed up, an arcing swing that cleaved deeply into one of the machine's six legs. A shock of electricity jolted through Cloud. Good; he'd hit internal circuitry. The mercenary pulled the blade free, wrenching it loose from the metal, and backed away as the robot turned and its scorpion-like tail jabbed down at him.

Rather than evade, Cloud snapped his blade across, actually deflecting the stabbing stinger out wide. He rushed in behind the attack and jumped up, landing on the connection between the damaged leg and the main body and chopped across, burying his sword into the side of the machine. He wasn't sure how deep the weapon struck, as an instant later the machinegun on that side swung around and batted him off the mecha's side. Cloud laded in a crouch beside the machine, and ducked between its numerous legs, noting with some satisfaction that the limb he had struck was still and unmoving.

The targeting sensor was still tracking Barret as he fired ferociously, trying to find maneuvering room on the narrow platform. Bullets lanced from his gun, deforming the metal armor of the machine as it was momentarily distracted by Cloud's assault. One of his bullets hit something critical; there was a small explosion inside its torso armor, forcing the machine a step back. Cloud took advantage of that attack, leaping up into the air and chopping his sword down hard into the forward armor of the machine. His sword dug in deeply once more, but then the tail shot over the machine's torso and stabbed down at Cloud.

The mercenary growled in sudden pain as the blade stabbed into his shoulder. Clutching his sword tightly with his left hand, he reached up to his shoulder with his right and closed his hands around the stinger. Then, with seemingly superhuman strength, he tore the stinger free from his body. He kicked off the front of the machine, tearing his blade free as he did so, and before it could pursue, Barret send a barrage of lethal rounds into the machine's chest.

Cloud dropped down beside Barret, and nodded toward his comrade as he pumped round after round into his target. The machine stumbled back, twisting its torso so as to bring one of its arms across to protect the vulnerable portion of its body. At the same time, its tail started to rise, energy visibly pumping through the tail toward its stinger. Bright light began to glow from the tip, almost too bright to watch.

"Barret, hold your fire!" Cloud quickly ordered, recognizing the motion. "Find cover, its going to-"

Cloud didn't get a chance to finish his warning, as light of the robot's stinger reached blinding intensity, and a scything blue bolt of light shot out, cutting across the platform at the pair. Cloud hurled himself back, just barely out of the bolt's path, but Barret took the beam across the chest, his coat instantly set ablaze by the laser. He roared in pain and fell back, grabbing at his coat and pulling the trenchcoat away, meaty hand and gun-arm scrabbling over his chest. The ceramic body armor he wore beneath his coat was slagged all the way across, half-molten, and he worked frantically to remove the armor's straps.

As Barret was doing this, the robot's tail lowered, and the targeting sensor lit up again, tracking toward Barret. Cloud saw this, and in an instant, he had rushed back at their enemy, leaping toward the machine's chest. Barret's gunfire had managed to rip open the plate on the front of the machine, the armor protecting its power core removed and leaving the weapon's heart exposed.

Cloud stabbed his sword as deeply as he could into the opening, driving the blade deep into the machine, and then thrust his left hand into the gap. Electricity crackled down the length of his arm as he channeled a blast of energy through his hand, and the mercenary unleashed a powerful bolt of lightning into the machine's heart. The shock stabbed up into the core of the weapon, electricity dancing over its power core and overloading the generator inside.

The weapon shuddered as its power core was overwhelmed by the electricity shooting through it, and Cloud leapt away as the generator went critical. He dashed back toward Barret, who had managed to remove the molten plate and throw it off his skin. Cloud grabbed the big man, yanking him back, and then their enemy exploded in a brilliant plume of fire and noise, chunks of the machine hurtling around the inside of the reactor. A heavy metal shard stabbed into the wall right above where Cloud and Barret were ducking, and other debris rained down around the pair for a few more seconds.

Cloud quickly stood up, and looked to his watch. His eyes widened, and he hauled Barret to his feet.

"Less than five minutes!" Cloud shouted, and his words energized Barret, who took off down the bridge, running around the collapsing hulk of the destroyed machine, and toward the ladders. They reached the ladders in seconds, and scrambled up them, Barret doing remarkably well considering his lack of a right hand. Within less than a minute they had ascended to the same level as Jessie, who had been watching their battle intently, helpless to get down there to assist them, and likely unable to help them with her small blades anyway.

"We gotta hurry!" Barret roared to her, and the trio quickly abandoned the interior of the Mako reactor, rushing outside. They quickly scaled the structure outside and made a mad dash for the elevator, Barret slapping frantically on the controls as it made its stately way down to their position. Finally, the elevator stopped and the doors opened, and the trio burst in.

"We gonna make it?" Barret asked, and Cloud glanced at his watch, before nodding.

"Three minutes left," he informed them. "As long as we don't run into any trouble, we should be fine." A moment later, the doors to the elevator slid open with a cheery tone, and gunfire slashed through the center of it, nearly taking down Barret. The big man fell back, pressing himself against the wall of the elevator.

"Ya had to open your mouth," he muttered, and Cloud shrugged, before rolling around the corner. The Shinra soldiers outside opened fire immediately, but Cloud was already ducking and rolling to the right, out of their line of fire. They pivoted, bringing their rifles to bear, and Barret spun around the doorjamb, gun-arm raised. 20mm rounds scythed across the room, blasting guards, tearing off limbs, and splattering heads.

Cloud came out of his evasive maneuver with another roll, and shot forward into the ranks of the squad of confused soldiers. His sword struck quickly, without mercy, cutting down three men with a pair of strokes. More gunfire erupted from the entrance to the room, and Cloud turned to see a Shinra war machine, a boxy contraption about man-height, set on two legs with wide metal feet, and with a pair of arms that sported heavy machineguns. The few surviving Shinra soldiers fell back to this machine, using it as cover as it poured fire into the elevator.

Barret cursed as he ducked behind cover, the heavy slugs exploding and ricocheting all around his head. He reached down to his belt and pulled out a grenade, the pin of which he removed and hurled blindly around the corner.

Cloud saw the grenade bounce out of the elevator, and quickly formulated a plan. He swept his sword before him in the air and let out a challenging roar at the Shinra troops, who spun, aiming their rifles at him. Cloud crouched, preparing to spring away, when the grenade stopped in the enemy's midst and detonated. Shrapnel flew around the room, a few pieces of which dug into Cloud's body, but he ignored the minor wounds. The Shinra soldiers were not so lucky, as they were torn part by the high-speed metal shards. The grenade penetrated the armor of the war machine, sending sparks flying across its length and forcing it a few steps back. Cloud took advantage of this and dashed forward, raising his sword as he neared the robot. The blade cleaved down like a thunderbolt, splitting the front of the machine in two and rupturing the power generator. The Shinra robot fell silently to the floor.

"No time, no time!" Barret quickly shouted, and the trio rushed over the metal corpse. They rushed through the antechambers beyond the battlefield and hurried outside, with less than thirty seconds remaining on the countdown timer. As they got outside, they quickly scanned the bridge, only to see no one around.

"Biggs! Wedge! Get ya asses out here!" In response, the door they were planning to use at the end of the bridge slid open, and Wedge poked his head out.

"Keep the door open!" Cloud ordered as they ran across the bridge, the seconds ticking away. They rounded the bend in the bridge and hurried toward the exit, with only a few seconds remaining. Suddenly, without warning, Jessie tripped on the bridge and started to stumble. Unthinkingly, Cloud spun, catching her, and lifted her up, hurling his body toward the portal. Barret barreled inside and spun, putting his shoulder against the solid metal door as the last couple of seconds ticked by far below, and then Cloud and Jessie sailed through the gap, rolling into the dark, safe tunnel beyond. Barret threw his weight against the door, and it slammed shut at the last possible moment.

Deep within the reactor, a small explosion detonated within the raw, unrefined pool of Mako energy. The small explosion set of a cataclysmic chain reaction as the Mako energy, the living lifeblood of the planet, stolen by Shinra, was turned into the very weapon that would destroy what the corporation had wrought.

In the blink of an eye, every drop of Mako in the reactor became pure, unbridled energy that expanded outward, consuming walls, machinery, corpses, and those soldiers and robotic sentries unfortunate enough to still be inside the perimeter of the facility. White fires ripped up through the chamber, throughout the lower levels, up into the reactor core and through the control rooms and offices, consuming the elevator Cloud, Barret, and Jessie had used.

It tore through each level, consuming all in its path as it advanced, a wall of unstoppable fire that rose up to the level even with Midgar's upper plate and onward, exploding up and out of the top of the reactor and far into the night sky.

Energy ripped out of the reactor, blasting through the halls and channeled out the door toward the bridge. A massive wall of raging plasma consumed the bridge, melting and rending the metal and utterly annihilating the place where Cloud and Jessie had stood a moment before. The fires were only barely kept back by the thick metal door the rebels had hid behind.

All of Midgar heard the resounding explosion, and everyone in Sectors One and Eight would tell of the shockwave from that blast, and the night that all of Midgar would know the name of the rebel terrorist organization that Barret Wallace had christened AVALANCHE.

* * *

"That should keep the Planet going, at least for a little longer," Biggs commented, laying back against a pile of rubble shaken loose from the ceiling during the explosion. Cloud leaned against the wall of the tunnel, while Wedge and Jessie worked on an explosive charge set against a door leading into Sector Eight's upper level.

"Get ya ass up," Barret muttered at the thin rebel, surprising him. "You weren't fightin' that big ugly sumabitch down below, were you?"

"Nah," Wedge replied with a chuckle. "We just hid from the guards when they came in force!"

"Yeah, about that," Cloud commented. "Why didn't you stop them?"

"Two of us, against a dozen of them?" Biggs replied. "And with Roboguard support? No thanks. Besides, we knew you guys could handle that!"

Barret snorted, and then winced, glancing at his shoulder. One of that robot's rounds had grazed him as he had been taking cover in the elevator. The injury was minor, compared with the burns that cut across his bare chest, but he would live. Cloud, on the other hand . . . .

The merc looked like he'd been through hell and back. A nasty series of red bite marks ran across the back of his neck, and his left shoulder was still badly gouged. A dozen minor cuts marked his body, and several black, clotted holes, bullet wounds he'd sustained throughout the mission, dotted his body. Yet, he seemed to ignore the injuries, as if they were trivial things, and even as Barret watched, his wounds became less pronounced, seeming to slowly heal right before his eyes. Cloud's face was locked in an impassive stare, as if he wasn't hurting at all.

"The hell you made out of?" Barret muttered under his breath, and looked aside as Jessie finished setting the bomb.

"Okay, people, get back!" she ordered, and they moved to the far end of the tiny chamber. An instant later, a brilliant flash of light shot through the room, and the wall blew open, revealing an open area beyond the new passageway. Cloud was first out, before the others even began to move forward, jumping through the small flames licking around the edge of the portal. Barret followed suit, and was quickly pursued by Jessie and Biggs, and finally Wedge, who rushed out quickly, his back singed by the flames.

The area outside the sealed tunnel was little more than a disused, empty lot in a run-down section of Sector Eight's topside plate. No one was in sight, and only a single road led out of the lot, a small drive that curved around a building and disappeared into the cityscape. Barret nodded, turning back to his group.

"Okay, good job!" the burly man barked. "One reactor down! But this is jus' the beginning. For right now, we need to split up and move out. Meet up at the train station, it should be leavin'," he glanced at his own watch. "Twenty minutes from now. Ya'll know how to get there. Move like you got a purpose!" The other rebels split up, leaving Barret and Cloud alone as they ducked through alleys or ran down the main road, quickly vanishing. Barret turned to leave as well, until Cloud interrupted him.

"Hey, Barret," he said, and the rebel leader waved his gun-arm into the air.

"You'll get your money when you get back," he responded, and Cloud shrugged.

"Just so we know," he replied.

"You're a hot hand back at the reactor," Barret added, looking back at Cloud. "But don't let that make ya cocky. Just because you were SOLDIER doesn't mean you're invincible." With that, Barret walked off down the street.

"Says who?" Cloud replied offhandedly to the emptiness. He waited a few more moments, and then reached down to his pocket, pulling out a small plastic pack. He shook it once, releasing a cigarette, and set it between his lips. He fished out a lighter and lit the smoke up, setting it ablaze and inhaling the scent. For most people, a cigarette was a bad thing, but Cloud didn't precisely have to worry about the health problems associated with them. Besides, long-term death seemed to be a minor threat to someone who spent their time hip-deep in warfare.

Cloud took another drag on the cigarette, and moved off into the city, quickly vanishing among the urban landscape. It was easy enough, considering that once he made his way into more populated areas, he was surrounded by dozens of panicked, shocked, and confused citizens, rushing hither and yon, as debris littered the streets and open plazas. Taking advantage of the panic, some people were looting a few stores. Shinra soldiers were out in force, he quickly saw, moving through the streets, stopping random people roughly and demanding IDs. Anyone who was too slow to produce one was cocked across the head with a rifle or baton, and the ID was forcibly taken from them. Typical Shinra arrogance. Of course, they were doing a fine job stopping the looters, at least. Couldn't let those thieves hurt the economy, after all.

Cloud made a point to avoid the soldiers as they systematically moved through the crowds. He kept his eyes on them, not paying attention to the people around him, mostly just frightened citizens shaken by the blast. However, as he walked, he heard a yelp of surprise, and glanced over to see a couple of punks, just like the rest of the looters, harassing a woman, demanding money from her. One was waving a steel pipe in his hand and talking tough. Cloud sighed and, taking another drag on his coffin nail, stepped over to the two men.

Clenching his cigarette between his teeth, he grabbed both punks by the scruffs of their collars and, with casual ease, smashed their heads together. He then whirled and launched the two men into an abandoned produce cart, smashing the wood and splattering what few vegetables remained intact within.

His good deed for the day done, Cloud silently turned away from the woman, who had been knocked down in the commotion. She quickly stepped after him.

"Wait!" she called, and he paused, glancing back for a moment, and then finding himself looking at her for a bit longer. That wasn't surprising, considering what he saw.

The first thing Cloud registered was her eyes, a vibrant shade of green that seemed to glow with inner life. They were set into a pale-skinned face that would have captured any man's heart, with smooth and unblemished skin, a delicate nose and a small mouth. Her rich brown hair was long and thickly braided, running down to below her waist. She wore a slender pink dress that seemed to cling to her body, highlighting her curves, and open enough to reveal her long, slender legs. She wore a small red jacket, open, over the dress, along with a small pair of weathered boots, and a necklace around her throat.

"Thank you," she said, and Cloud grunted something in response. He looked down at her slender, delicate hands, and saw she was carrying a small wicker basket, filled with flowers.

"Do you know what happened?" she asked, looking up at the buildings around her. "I heard an explosion, and then the people started panicking, and now there are Shinra troops everywhere."

"No clue," Cloud lied, distracted by what she had in her basket. Brilliantly colored flowers filled the basket, looking freshly picked and well-cared for. There was no way those came from Midgar . . . Did they?

"These?" she asked, noticing what he was looking at, and nodding at his perplexed expression. "Flowers don't grow in Midgar. People are so amazed when they see them. Do you want one? Its only one gil."

She must have been poor, Cloud mused, selling flowers on the street. At least she didn't have to resort to other, more base means of making an income, and people around Midgar would love to get their hands on those kinds of flowers, especially at such a low price. Some rich people would pay a thousand times that price for even one flower.

Cloud reached into his pocket, and took out a wad of gil bills. He wasn't sure how much money he had in his fist, but he guessed at least thirty or forty gil was there. He dropped it into her basket casually. She looked at him, surprised, and he shook his head.

"Keep the flowers, I don't have much use for them," Cloud explained with a shrug. He turned around and walked away, leaving the girl behind, surprised by his charity. Such things were a rarity in Midgar. Part of the reason why he didn't like this damn city . . . .

* * *

Barret stood over the lifeless corpse of the Shinra soldier, his neck twisted at a lethal angle. Slowly, the big man lifted the dead man up, and pinned the corpse to the wall with his gun-arm. His other hand grasped an iron bar, which he slammed through the dead man's stomach, driving it into the side of the wall. Barret stepped away, admiring his handiwork.

"Like shot geese," he said with a chuckle. Beside him, Jessie reached into her pocket and pulled out a rolled up poster that proclaimed AVALANCHE's responsibility for the bombing, placing it on the man's face, and stabbed a small knife through it, pinning the sign to the corpse's head.

"Phone calls are so cliché," Jessie commented as they moved off, leaving the dead man's body pinned up on the side street, a macabre signpost.

"That'll show 'em we mean business," Barret responded. "AVALANCHE ain't here to fuck around!"

A minute later, as they neared the train station, the two heard a woman's scream, and knew that their calling card had been discovered. By morning, all of Midgar would have heard of their terrorist group.

* * *

Cloud ducked around the corner, and quickly counted down from four. As he reached the end of his countdown, his hand shot up, and with perfect timing, the pursuing Shinra soldier ran right into his waiting fingers. Cloud spun the man around, and wrapped his other arm around his neck. A quick twist and pull shattered the soldier's vertebrae and finished him. Not hesitating, the warrior spun, and grabbed a soldier right behind that man, who was skittering to a halt and raising his rifle. Before the soldier could even cry out in shock, Cloud whirled and smashed him into the wall hard enough the crack the bricks.

All it had taken was one lucky (or unlucky) MP, who had demanded Cloud's ID. The mercenary's response was to punch the man's lights out, launching him across the plaza, and then he had taken off, Shinra troops in hot pursuit.

Now he was behind schedule. Three minutes ago the train was supposed to leave, and he was being dogged by the enemy. Cloud did have a plan, however, and if the train was on time, he would be able to get away. The only problem was these damn soldiers were like cockroaches.

Cloud moved down the street quickly, as more enemy soldiers filled the alley behind him. He reached an open street that overlooked the train tracks, and nodded. He glanced at his watch. One minute.

Two soldiers entered the street from Cloud's right as he stepped out. Without hesitation, Cloud pulled the sword off his back in a smooth overhead cleave that sliced one unfortunate man in half, and whirled, bisecting the second with a horizontal cleave. Shouts of shock and surprise surrounded him, and Cloud turned, running up the street toward the train track it ran over.

Between two buildings came another pair of enemy soldiers, and Cloud cursed as he saw them too far away to strike down with his sword. His left hand rose, and two glowing lights on his gauntlet flashed brilliant green. A shard of ice and a bolt of lightning lanced out, each blast of magic striking one of the men in the torso and hurling them off their feet.

Cloud moved back toward the edge of the street, overlooking the train tracks, as another soldier rushed at him recklessly. Without missing a beat, his sword slashed across, chopping the man down in a shower of blood. Yet another foe closed in from Cloud's right, and his arm shot across, smashing the hilt of his weapon into the man's faceplate and hurling him away. A third foe smacked Cloud across the face with his baton as his sword arm was tied up. Cloud snarled and sent a jab across into the soldier's face, rocking him back, and grabbed the man by his armor. Lifting him with his left hand, Cloud's forehead crashed into the man's armored helmet, denting it inward and dazing the soldier. The mercenary casually tossed the man over his shoulder, off the edge of the street toward the tracks below.

By that time, an entire platoon of Shinra soldiers were quickly surrounding Cloud, cutting him off from escape and pinning him against the edge of the street. Every man had a rifle leveled at Cloud, and behind their masks, the mercenary knew their faces were locked in anger due to the corpses strewn about him. He glanced around at the soldiers, and then down at his watch, as a rumbling filled the air and shook the pavement beneath the soldiers' feet.

"Sorry," he said after a moment, shrugging. "I don't have time to screw around with you _punks._" Cloud spat out the last word. One of the soldiers, an officer apparently, laughed.

"Don't care how tough you are," the man snarled. "You're dead now. Kill his ass!"

The Shinra soldiers brought their fingers to their triggers and, with another halfhearted shrug, Cloud hopped back off the ledge. A slight grin went across his face as he did so, and his left hand rose up, giving the officer a one-fingered salute. The man shouted something in outrage, and instant before Cloud's raised wrist flared, and the officer caught a bolt of lightning in the face. Before the other soldiers could react, Cloud was out of sight. They rushed to the edge of the street, and looked down, to see the train passing below rocketing away into the darkness.

They managed to catch a glimpse of Cloud Strife, crouched on top of the train, his sword in its leather sheath on his back and raising both hands, middle fingers extended in their direction.

* * *

Aside from the lone, patrolling Shinra soldier Barret had killed and used as a signpost, nothing else of note had happened while the remainder of the rebel group were en route to the train. Now, they stood in the rear car of the vehicle, the baggage and cargo car, somber and quiet. None of the rebels spoke, all of them exhausted, and some of them actually worried about the fifth member of their group.

"Barret, you think Shinra killed Cloud?" Biggs asked, and Barret shrugged, wincing at his wounded shoulder.

"How'm I supposed'ta know?" he replied, shaking his head. "I don't think he's dead, myself. Damn crazy fool is as hard as they come."

"You think he'll stay with us?" Wedge asked hopefully. "Stay on with AVALANCHE and fight Shinra?"

"I look like a mind reader?" Barret snarled, slamming his arm down on the box next to him, splintering the wood. "You try predicting what's goin' on in that crazy bastard's head."

They rode on in silence for a few more moments. Then, the group looked up, hearing a faint clattering on the rooftop, barely audible over the clatter of the train car. A few moments later, the cargo door suddenly flew open, startling the rebels, and a figure suddenly dropped into the room, flipping in under the doorjamb of the open portal.

"Holy shit!" Biggs exclaimed as Cloud's battered, battle-scarred body dropped into the room with the rest of the group. Cloud paused to dust himself off, apparently not caring about the wide red mark across his face, where something had obviously clubbed him.

"Cloud!" Barret roared, halfway in anger and half in surprise. "The _hell_ you doin'?"

"What does it look like?" Cloud answered with a shrug, looking around the room. Good, he mused. Everyone had survived.

"Goddamn hotshot!" Barret snarled. "Gettin' everyone here worried about whether Shinra wasted you or not, and then making some damn flashy entrance like that!"

"Flashy?" Cloud echoed, and shrugged. "Nah. Just what I always do."

"Son of a . . ." Barret fumed, and he smashed the crate beside him again. "That's comin' outta your pay, hotshot!" He spun and clambered over a box blocking the entrance to the car up ahead. "C'mon, we can't be sittin' back here all day! Time to upgrade our accommodations." With that, the huge, angry man stormed into the next car.

"Hey, hey Cloud, don't listen to Barret," Biggs said quickly, and Wedge nodded.

"You rocked back there!" the portly man added, and Cloud managed a shrug. "Never seen anyone fight like you did!"

"I did my job," Cloud replied quietly as Biggs and Wedge made their way past the mercenary, clambering over the crates and following after Barret. As they did so, the roar of the air whipping past the car was cut off. Cloud glanced over his shoulder to see Jesse securing the door he had leapt through, and then turn back.

"Didn't want anyone to fall out or anything," she explained, smiling slightly at the mercenary. "Ah . . . thanks for the save, Cloud. If you hadn't grabbed me back there . . . ."

"It was nothing," Cloud replied. "I did my job." She nodded, and started moving past him, but then paused and looked back, frowning.

"Hey, your face is covered with soot," she muttered. Cloud reached up toward his face, but Jesse quickly reached up before he could and rubbed her sleeve over his face, wiping the ash and grime off. He blinked in surprise as she did so, not used to people being quite so forward around him. If they had been in combat, he might have reacted to such a motion as if it were an attack . . . .

"There," she added with a smile. "Much better." She hesitated for a second, almost looking like she wanted to say something else, but then walked past Cloud, following her comrades. He watched her move past him, and, after a couple of moments enjoying the relative silence of the empty train car, he followed suit. The mercenary climbed over the crates and moved between the rear cargo car and the last passenger car on the train.

The car should have had a fair number of occupants sitting in the seats or standing along the length of the vehicle. But when a collection of toughened, dirty-looking individuals barged into the car, clad in combat gear and all heavily-armed and equipped, most of the regular citizens quickly evacuated the compartment. Only a couple of homeless, half asleep drunkards remained in the rear passenger car after AVALANCHE took over.

"Sit yo' asses down and shut up!" Barret snarled to the rest of his team, particularly at Wedge and Biggs, who were chatting and laughing like teenagers come back from a late party. "Quit actin' like a buncha kids!"

Cloud himself plopped down on one of the torn, stained cloth seats for a moment, stretching his sore muscles as an announcement of the estimated time of arrival at their destination could be heard over the intercom. They'd be back in the Sector Seven slums before half past midnight. Good.

He looked over his body, scanning the scratches and cuts, and checking the bullet rounds. Barret watched the mercenary with interest as his body slightly healed right before his very eyes. It looked like the bullet wounds that Cloud had suffered were almost sealed up, the rounds having been pushed right out of his skin by the regenerating tissue. Barret Wallace had no idea what to make of it, but he remembered one of the stories about members of SOLDIER, how they were showered with intense treatments of Mako energy, which fundamentally altered their bodies. And apparently, one of the effects was that unnatural regenerative power Cloud had . . . no man would otherwise be standing and fighting with the savage wounds that he had suffered in the assault on the Mako reactor.

Barret then knew that, despite his anger and annoyance at Cloud's antics, that he had made a good investment in the mercenary.

The lights in the car dimmed momentarily, and a harsh red light cut through the passenger car. The members of AVALANCHE tensed as the light flashed for several seconds, before it vanished and the train's normal lights cut back on.

"Jesse! Good job!" Barret called to the brown-haired woman, and she smiled, a bit embarrassed.

"That was the I.D. checkpoint you warned us about in the briefing, huh?" Cloud asked offhandedly, and Barret nodded.

"Scans the I.D. cards of everyone on the train," Jesse added, pulling out her own identification card for a moment. "And then checks those readings back with the database in the central Shinra HQ. Lets Shinra know exactly who is on the train at any given moment . . . and since the data is on Shinra's secure servers in their own headquarters, it is, theoretically, safe and reliable."

Biggs snorted.

"Yeah, no hacker would ever be able to insert a fake I.D. through their security!" he added, with a snicker, and Jesse looked embarrassed again.

"Still, even if what I planted in their servers checks out, they'll eventually find the forged data and purge it, and increase their security," she added. "But by then we may have found a way around the checkpoints themselves."

"So, why don't we just not carry I.D. at all?" Wedge asked. Barret leaned forward and swatted the portly man lightly across the front of his forehead.

"Dumbass!" he snarled. "Ain't it obvious?"

"Uhhh . . . ." Wedge began to say, not sure what to reply with.

"Shinra has biometrics scanners set up alongside the I.D. scanners at the checkpoints," Cloud answered before Wedge could get smacked again. "If there's someone on the train who isn't reading as carrying an I.D., the train gets flagged and a security team is waiting at its next destination to check everyone out."

"So, not carrying an I.D. is a sure way to get caught by Shinra," Jesse finished.

"And since we're good, upstandin' citizens," Barret added with a grin. "We always carry."

The train broke free from the tunnels a moment later, and rolled out over open train tracks exposed to the grimy, polluted air of the lower city of Midgar. The slums stretched out for miles in all directions before the windows, countless people making their homes among the refuse and garbage of the upper city. No sunlight or starlight fell upon the darkened depths of Midgar's slums; only the light from fires or battery-operated electrical lights lit up the lower city. Some power lines snaked from the pillar supporting the upper city and ran to several homes, but few could afford to pay the rates Shinra charged for its electrical power.

Eight sectors made up Midgar, each consisting of a wedge-shaped plate attached to the central pillar at the center of the city that held up the massive power plant and corporate headquarters of Shinra. A secondary support pillar located further out held up each plate. Each of the eight sectors of Midgar had its corresponding slum located beneath the plate, living off the trash and refuse that the more affluent citizens living up top dropped.

"Look out there," Barret muttered, watching the slums pass by. "This city don't have any day or night."

Cloud nodded as he watched the slums with his glowing eyes. He looked up, to the plate towering over the lower city, and thought back to his first glimpse of Midgar. He caught a flash of memory from when he'd first arrived in town . . . how long ago? He couldn't remember exactly; all he could really recall was seeing the massive city seeming to hover in the sky over the ground, suspended atop massive platforms and pillars, the Shinra Headquarters stabbing up into the brown, overcast, polluted sky like a shining dagger of corruption.

"A floating city," he muttered, remembering that vivid first impression. "Very . . . disconcerting when you first see it."

"Damn right," Barret answered, voice filled with frustrated rage. "And its' cause of that fuckin' plate up above that the people down here don't have any day or night! Those assholes up top, makin' life so hard for the people down here in the slums."

"If they don't like it," Cloud added, turning his eyes back toward the squalor spreading out around the central pillar. "They should move up onto the plate, or get out of town to begin with."

"Not everyone's got that choice," Barret replied, shaking his head. "Expensive to live up on the plate. Not very many people got the money to go up there. And some are crooks, people that can't show their faces up top or they'll get caught by Shinra. And some of 'em love their land, no matter how polluted it gets. Life may be shit for 'em, but they've got something to hold onto and call their own. Can't let that ever slip away."

Cloud listened to Barret speak, and caught something in the way he delivered that last bit, spoken with a healthy wave of vehemence and a tinge of regret. The mercenary was a bit curious, but one look on the rebel leader's face, clouded with anger, told Cloud to not inquire at that moment. Instead, he simply nodded.

"No one lives in the slums because they choose to," he stated, and looked out the window again.

"They're like this train," he finished. "It can't go anywhere except where its tracks lead it."


	3. AVALANCHE

****

Chapter Two: AVALANCHE

While Shinra's military and police forces did not have a particularly firm grip on the slums, they did enforce the law down there, typically by setting up heavily-armed and barricaded security checkpoints between the different sectors, complete with massive walls. During the daytime the checkpoints were not as strict and allowed the necessary commerce and traffic to pass through; during the night, however, the slums were locked down, and heavily armed patrols roamed the areas around the checkpoints and security gates. No one except Shinra personnel moved between sectors at night. The only way into or out of the slums during the evening hours was by train, and every slum sector had a train depot to allow workers and citizens to move around. After all, just because they lived in the slums didn't mean that civilians couldn't be productive workers or paying consumers.

It was twenty minutes after Cloud's dramatic escape on the train that the locomotive slid into the Sector Seven station. The last people still riding the train got off, and among them were the victorious members of AVALANCHE. They quickly hustled off the car and onto the platform, and Barret led them away from the few civilians nearby and gathered them into a group.

"Alright, now we're safe," he stated. "This hit was a success, for sure!"

"Yeah!" Biggs said, and Wedge nodded. Barret's trio of subordinates were positively beaming after the completion of the bombing and the successful escape, but Cloud saw something else in their eyes: anticipation. They were begging for the next mission, eager to continue the fight against Shinra. That was both a good and a bad thing. Morale was high, but it could also lead to over-eagerness, which might lead the group into a situation they couldn't handle.

"But don't think this is it," Barret continued. "That little explosion was nuthin'! We're gonna hit Shinra again, ten times as hard. They're gonna fear AVALANCHE by the time we're done!" Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge let out another exuberant cheer, though this one was tempered by a desire not to draw too much attention to themselves from anyone who might be watching.

"Regroup back at the hideout," Barret barked, and the others nodded. "Move!"

The rebels quickly scattered, hurrying off the platform and running to the west, across the barren, brown dirt and mud of the slums. Barret followed suit, but was stopped when Cloud grabbed his shoulder.

"My pay," he muttered quietly, and Barret chuckled, shaking his arm free of Cloud's grasp.

"You'll get your share when we get back to the base," he replied gruffly, and Cloud nodded, before following the rebel leader off the platform and delving into the slums.

Sector Seven was, for lack of a better way to describe it, a shithole. The slums were the toilet, garbage dump, and sewer of the upper levels, ad it showed, with the tremendous piles of trash and garbage strewn about the open, flat terrain of the slums. Chunks of masonry, bags of stinking refuse, scrap metal, wrecked vehicles, and other unidentifiable pieces of trash were strewn about the slums beneath the plate, often piled high into artificial mountains.

Cloud passed between two of these hills of garbage, and spotted the outer perimeter of one of the dozens of slum villages scattered around Sector Seven. Like most of the slums, the people lived in sprawling, scattered collections of houses scattered across the slums, many constructed from refuse and discarded building materials. Houses made of rotting wood, rusted metal, chipped and cracked bricks and stone, and plywood made up the majority of the homes in the region. Many lacked roofs, or what roofs they had were constructed of sheet metal. None of the buildings resembled a real home, but somehow, the industrious poor of Midgar had managed to build structures that reasonably resembled normal houses.

There was a strange degree of honesty here, Cloud could tell, as he walked through the outer perimeter of junkyards and into the small village. The people in Midgar's slums were popularized as criminals and malcontents, and it was true that the slums did house an array of unsavory characters. But the vast majority of the people Cloud saw in Sector Seven were ordinary citizens, eking out a living as best they could among the garbage and squalor of the upper city. The slum was, in a way, a nicer place than the cleaner but more corrupted plates above.

Toward the heart of the shanty town was a building that was actually well-made, constructed of wood planks and timbers, with a solid brick foundation. The building looked well-worn and used, but it was intact and standing strong in the center of the slum. A large glowing neon sign hung over the swinging doors of the entrance, reading "Seventh Heaven Bar" in large green letters. As Cloud strode toward the building, Barret walked up toward it, the other three members of AVALANCHE emerging from the nearby buildings to flank him. The burly rebel strode into the building while his comrades remained outside, waiting patiently.

Barret's voice could be heard thundering inside the structure, and it sounded like he was ordering everyone out of the building. There were several shouts of protest, and a moment later a huge, portly man came flying out the front door, rolling down the wooden steps leading up to the entrance and ending up face-down in the slum dirt.

The rest of the bar's patrons, a dozen other men and women, hurried out without another complaint, allowing AVALANCHE and Cloud to walk inside the building without any trouble. Barret bulled his way back outside to make sure the crowd was dispersed.

The interior of Seventh Heaven was in as good a shape as the exterior. Made of solid brown wood planks, the bar looked as if it belonged in the upper plate. A long, pockmarked wooden bar and worn but functional chairs, stools, and wooden tables filled the room, along with a working pinball machine in one corner and the odd paraphernalia that restaurants and bars tended to accumulate were hung up along the walls. A tremendous selection of beers, wines, a liquors was stacked up along the wall behind the bar. A television was hanging above the bar, but it wasn't turned on, which was a reasonable precaution; Barret had an annoying tendency to shoot up TVs when President Shinra was giving a speech.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse were all seated around a large table, already drinking beers and chatting excitedly about the mission and exchanging notes on what had happened when they'd been separated. Cloud walked into the room, but didn't immediately take a seat, instead looking around the bar for a moment.

"Papa!" came a shout, and Cloud glanced down at a small girl, probably barely more than four or five years old, with pale skin, long, rich, dark brown hair and large, equally dark brown eyes. The little girl was looking out at where Barret stood, barring the door, and the burly leader looked back, and, to Cloud's surprise, cracked a smile and waved with his fleshy hand. The little girl waved back, and then looked up at Cloud. Her eyes widened in surprise, which was understandable, considering the powerful figure the muscular mercenary cut, especially with the numerous healing but still clearly visible wounds. He definitely looked the part of one who could scare small children away, and that he did, as the little girl took a step back from where Cloud stood, a little bit afraid.

"Marlene," came a voice from behind the counter, and a slender woman stepped out from behind the bar and put a comforting hand on the little girl's shoulder. "Don't be scared of Cloud." She crouched next to the little girl and smiled, a warm expression that instantly soothed the little girl's feelings. "He may look tough, but he's a softy inside."

Cloud snorted, and managed a smile as the woman stood up and looked to Cloud with her lighter brown eyes. She was beautiful, with a face that would catch the eye of any man, and slender, with attractive curves that her brown khaki shorts and white tank top did nothing to hide. Her long brown hair extended well past her hips and dropped near her knees, pulled back and gathered into a loose braid at her hips. Her long, slender legs ended with surprisingly rugged brown boots, scuffed and worn but still very functional. Her entire body was toned and subtly muscular; at first glance she seemed slender, but watching her move showed the supple strength hidden beneath her lightweight frame.

"How did it go?" Tifa Lockheart, owner of the Seventh Heaven Bar and one of the key founding members of AVALANCHE, asked him.

"It wasn't a cakewalk," Cloud replied with a shrug.

"Did you fight with Barret this time?" she asked, a little concerned but mostly seeming resigned. Cloud shrugged.

"We don't exactly see eye-to-eye on this Planet stuff," he responded truthfully. Tifa sighed in response to that, and Cloud resisted the urge to roll his eyes. She as almost as bad as Barret when it came to the group's mission, but at least she didn't shove the "save the Planet" routine into his face like Barret had. Tifa had been his friend since childhood, but they hadn't seen each other for a long time. When he'd last seen her, five years ago, back home in Nibelhiem, she hadn't been a member of a rebel group; she'd been a fifteen year-old mountaineering enthusiast. Now she was part and parcel of an insane bunch who were on a crusade to kill Shinra. Times and people changed.

None more than me, I guess . . . .

"I should have known you two would butt heads," Tifa remarked. "Barret's always pushing people around, and you've always been in fights since you were a kid. Too proud to back down, both of you."

As she was speaking, the heavy-set rebel leader lumbered through the doors, closing them behind him. The sour look on his face instantly changed to a warm smile that looked totally out of place on the vicious rebel's face as he scooped up a smiling Marlene and lifted the girl up onto his shoulder. Cloud watched this with interest, knowing immediately that Marlene couldn't have been Barret's real daughter. With the little girl perched on his huge, muscled shoulder, Barret turned toward his comrades.

"Gather round, fools!" he shouted. "We're starting the meeting!"

"Up here?" Cloud asked, and Barret glanced at him, a surprised look on his face.

"What? You thinkin' we're stupid?" He strode over to the pinball machine, and kicked the bottom of it, flipping something hidden underneath the machine. Instantly, the entire floor around the machine clicked and started to descend into a hidden basement below.

"Clever," Cloud remarked, and Biggs nodded.

"Jesse put the whole thing together," he explained. "No one would guess that this is our hideout!"

Slowly, the trio of rebels stood up, stretching, and moved toward the elevator as it rose back up, settling into position, the platform melding seamlessly with the wooden floor. They boarded it, crowding onto the platform, and rode the elevator down to the basement. As it descended, Tifa walked back to the bar, and started cleaning up back there. Cloud, after a second, took a seat in one of the stools, relaxing. He reached over his shoulder and pulled the harness holding his sword off, and set it down, leaning it against the wooden bar.

"You want a drink?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Something stiff and hard," he replied, and she nodded, grabbing a bottle marked "Reagan" off the back wall.

"Just a sec," she said. She started mixing the contents with something else from back there while Cloud waited.

"How long have you been with these guys?" he asked after a moment.

"Not too long," she answered. "I've been with Barret since . . . About maybe a year ago. I ran into him in Junon a while back." She turned around, drink in hand, and passed it down the bar to Cloud, who caught it deftly. "Why?"

"Just curious," he responded. She nodded after a moment, and went back to work.

"Yeah, I had finished training with Sensei Zangan, and I was still bitter after Nibelhiem," she continued. "I guess Barret saw that when we ran into each other. He was combing the slums of Junon for recruits against Shinra, and I was passing through. He saw how I could handle myself and asked me if I wanted to help him."

"You've already finished with Zangan?" Cloud mused, surprised, and she looked up, nodding.

"I _was_ his best student," she replied. "He said I picked up the tricks to his style almost even more naturally than he did." She paused again, and wiped down one of the machines. "I wish I could have joined you guys at the Reactor bombing."

"Nah," Cloud responded. "We had as many people as we needed. It wasn't that tough of a job anyway."

Tifa looked at him quizzically, noting the cuts and punctures in his skin, though not very visible anymore as his augmented healing kept acting.

"I suppose not," she responded after a few more moments, as Cloud kept nursing his drink. "Oh, and be sure to get your money from Barret." Cloud glanced up to her, catching something in her voice, a faint bit of disapproval even as she spoke. Once again, she was showing how she didn't like his attitude toward this whole thing, though a lot more subtle than Barret's angry shouting. Still, even as quietly delivered as it was, it stung the mercenary slightly to be hearing that from Tifa, of all people.

"Once I get my money, I'm out of here," Cloud replied quietly, finishing his drink and standing up. He reached over and grabbed his sword, reattaching the harness to his shoulder. Tifa watched him walk away from the bar and toward the elevator, and then ride it down to the lower sub-basement.

The lift descended for a good forty feet underground, dropping through a long tunnel, before opening into a small chamber deep underground, lined with concrete and with a floor of solid steel. AVALANCHE's secure underground bunker was a brightly lit chamber with walls covered in maps, newspaper clippings, and the like, with a wide table set up in the center. A worn, patched, beat-up punching bag hung up in one corner, and in another was a large television. Jesse was seated at a computer next to the lift, typing furiously away as the TV droned on, a newscaster giving a report on the terrorist attack an hour ago. Biggs and Wedge were seated around the table, while Barret was planting a meaty combo against the punching bag as Marlene watched. Cloud watched Barret's style, and noted that he preferred to use his right arm for heavy blows, which made sense, considering the obvious power a hand of solid steel would have behind it.

"Hey, Cloud," Barret called. "I gotta question!"

Cloud stepped off the elevator, but didn't say anything. Instead, he simply looked to Barret as he plopped down on a chair by the center table.

"Was there anyone from SOLDIER in the reactor tonight?" Barret asked, pounding the bag with a left hook. Cloud snorted and immediately shook his head.

"No," he answered. "Definitely not anyone from SOLDIER."

"How do you know?" Biggs asked, and Cloud shrugged.

"You'd be dead," he answered. "Or worse." The meaty smack of Barret slapping his punching bag filled the room.

"Don't be thinking you're all hot and hardcore jus' 'cause you was in SOLDIER!" Barret responded, clearly trying to deflate the mercenary. Cloud didn't respond, instead glancing over his shoulder at Jesse, who was watching the television screen, which further served to annoy Barret. The meaty impacts sounded again as Jesse suddenly spoke up.

"Hey, look!" she called, grabbing a remote and turning the volume up. "Its President Shinra!"

"That fat shit?" Barret asked, breaking off from his punches and pounding around the table to get a better view at the screen. Cloud heard a loud, resonant click from the rebel leader's gun-arm, and he knew that the man was restraining the urge to put a bullet into the TV then and there. Instead, Barret watched the screen a huge, fat executive clad in a garishly expensive, blood-red suit leaned behind a desk. Hovering above his head was the headline "Terrorists Strike Reactor!" Cloud, along with everyone else, recognized the mustached fat man as none other than Alexander Louis Shinra, the President of Shinra Inc.

"Citizens of Midgar," the President began. "Earlier this morning many of you were rocked out of your beds by a tremendous detonation along the southern edge of our city. It is my deepest regret to give you all this dark news. The Number One Mako Reactor between Sectors Eight and One has been destroyed by a band of vicious, murderous terrorists. The secure perimeter of the reactor was breached after vicious fighting, and the criminals placed an explosive within the reactor that destroyed it. Estimates from the damages are still coming in, though we know that the total casualties from the explosion number in the mid-hundreds, and are rising. We have confirmed that many of the criminals were killed during their efforts to storm the reactor itself."

Barret burst out laughing, as did the other rebels, at that last line. As they laughed among themselves, Cloud paid careful attention to the next words the President spoke as he straightened up.

"The brutal criminals responsible for this atrocity have identified themselves as AVALANCHE. We believe that other elements of this terrorist force are in action and plotting further attacks as we speak. In order to hunt down this threat and ensure future peace, we have immediately mobilized the Shinra military machine and dispatched elements of SOLDIER to locate and eradicate these murderers. We at Shinra will protect our citizens against any enemy. Security checkpoints have been established in all sectors and a strict curfew will be established starting tomorrow night. All citizens will be required to hand over identification at any checkpoint and at the request of corporate police and soldiers. These new measures are for your own safety. Thank you and good night."

"Hm," Jesse mused as Shinra's image was replaced by the corporation's seal. "If what he's saying is true, we could have problems."

"They won't be setting up checkpoints in the slums," Cloud commented. "At least not inside individual slum sectors, but they may have them enforced at the gates." Restricting movement in the slums was stupid; Shinra could much more efficiently maintain control by manning the gates, not to mention focus their manpower in those areas. No need to risk putting good soldiers out in the dangerous slum regions.

"Any case," Barret added, "we're gonna have trouble movin' around up on the plates, especially if we pull another strike like we did tonight."

"Not to mention they have SOLDIER on the streets as well," Cloud added, looking away for a moment.

"Hey, now," Barret said, noticing the distant look. "You thinkin' about how it was back with SOLDIER, huh? Remember, yo' skinny ass is workin' for AVALANCHE now!"

"_Was_ working with," Cloud responded coolly, staring at Barret with a gaze that seemed to beam icicles at the rebel leader. "I still haven't gotten my pay, either." He stood up and walked toward the elevator.

"Cloud, wait-" Jesse said as the mercenary strode past.

"Nah, Jesse, leave 'im alone," Barret snarled. "Looks like he still misses Shinra!" The words were ridiculous, but Cloud knew they were intended to get under his skin. Still, a flash of arrogant pride cut through him, demanding he respond. He turned toward Barret, and fixed him solidly with his gaze.

"Shove it, Barret," Cloud said coldly. "I don't give a damn about Shinra _or_ SOLDIER." He glanced at the rebels, all of whom we watching him, and made certain to clarify matters further.

"But don't get me wrong. I don't give a shit about the Planet _or_ AVALANCHE either."

"Fucking dick-head!" Barret shouted, rage boiling over. Cloud didn't answer, instead walking to the pinball machine and activating it, riding up to the bar's main floor. The device cranked up to the top, and the mercenary found, to no surprise, Tifa waiting for him at the top. Their conversation must have been relatively audible from down below, and Tifa knew the gist of it.

"Cloud," she began, but he waved a hand in the air. She pressed on, though, ignoring his casual dismissal. "Cloud please, we need you on this team."

"I'm a mercenary, Tifa," he replied. "I do my job for money, not out of the kindness of my heart."

"But the Planet is dying!" she protested, abandoning all her subtle attempts to persuade him. Cloud obstinately shook his head.

"Let Barret and AVALANCHE handle it," he responded. "Its not my problem." Tifa blinked at that, and she almost looked hurt by what he had said, and Cloud realized that he had just lumped her in with AVALANCHE, more or less ignoring her. His expression softened a little bit.

"Are you just going to walk out on your old childhood friend?" Tifa asked, the last three words delivered sarcastically, cutting deep into the mercenary's skin. Cloud blinked at her accusing tone, and shook his head.

"I didn't mean it like that," he responded.

"Then what did you mean it as?" Tifa replied, pressing him. She put her hand son her slender hips, frowning disapprovingly at the ex-SOLDIER. "Did you forget?"

"Forget what?" Cloud asked, and Tifa sighed, shaking her head.

"You forgot our promise, didn't you?" At Cloud's vacant, confused stare, Tifa shook her head again, clearly disappointed in her old friend.

"You remember, back in Nibelhiem, when we were children, don't you?" she asked, and Cloud closed his eyes. He reached back with his mind, and as he thought back, he remembered a faint pain in his knees . . . And then her recalled the moment she was speaking of.

"Late at night, at the well," he remarked. "There weren't any clouds in the sky . . . You could see every star perfectly."

"It was getting late," Tifa replied, nodding, managing a slight smile. Her disappointment had rapidly faded, replaced by a nostalgic tone. "We agreed to meet at the well, and it was starting to get cold. I didn't think you would show up."

"I did," Cloud replied, nodding. "Didn't I . . . I told you that I was leaving town, didn't I? To go join SOLDIER."

"That's right. All the boys were leaving town, but they were all looking for other jobs. I think you were the only one who wanted to join the military. And certainly no one wanted to join SOLDIER. You said you wanted to be like the great Sephiroth . . . ." Cloud's expression clouded over at the mention of that name, and he became very quiet. After a second, Tifa poked Cloud in the shoulder with a finger, smiling. "And that was when I made you make that promise." His expression shifted back to a normal one, and he even smiled.

"Yeah, you did," Cloud responded, nodding.

"If you ever joined SOLDIER and became a famous hero, you'd come help me if I was in trouble, right?" Tifa asked. "I wouldn't let you go until you made that promise!" Cloud mulled over her words, now remembering that moment if far-off Nibelhiem far more clearly. It seemed like a lifetime ago, which it really was, once he considered it. Nearly a decade had passed . . . .

"Tifa," he spoke quietly. "I'm no hero, and I never became famous. I'm just a mercenary, and a traitor to Shinra." He looked into her face, and shook his head.

"But you achieved your dream, right?" she asked hopefully. "You became a member of SOLDIER."

"I did, but . . . ."

"No buts!" came a snarl beside the pair. They both looked up, to see Barret towering over the pinball machine, having rode it back up during their conversation. The burly rebel leader had heard a substantial part of Cloud and Tifa's reminisces already.

"Cloud, a promise is a fuckin' promise," the big man stated, and he reached into one of his pockets, fingering a thick wad of green and blue printed paper money. He tossed it to the mercenary, who caught it. "Yo' payment."

Cloud tossed the wad of cash into the air, catching it, and judged the value by the weight.

"Fifteen hundred gil?" he muttered. "You've got to be kidding me."

"What!" Barret exclaimed, his dark skin flushing with anger.

"You have another mission lined up?" Cloud asked. "I'll do it." he glanced to Tifa, who barely managed to hide her smile at his agreement to continue fighting with AVALANCHE. "For three thousand."

"Three damn thousand?" Barret's roar nearly shook the wooden panels, and Tifa's eyes widened. She glanced between the two, almost expecting Barret to leap forward and throttle the demanding mercenary with his one good hand.

"Barret, we need the help," she hissed to him, and the rebel leader crossed his arms, managing to hold himself in check.

"That money's for Marlene's schooling," he responded. He sized up Cloud for a minute, and then shook his head. "Fifteen again, for the same work. We're hitting another reactor just like last time."

"Twenty five," Cloud replied, willing to play Barret's game.

"Eighteen hundred," Barret muttered.

"Twenty two," Cloud stated.

"Two thousand, and you're gonna fucking _like_ it!" Barret snarled, pounding a table with his left hand, cracking the wood and leaving a few splinters in his fingerless gloves. Cloud considered for a moment, and then nodded.

"Fair enough."

* * *

Cloud had not been able to sit in on the mission planning during the last reactor bombing; AVALANCE didn't trust him enough. However, after seeing Cloud in action during the last mission, and how he had saved everyone's asses more than once, the rebels were a bit more open to his involvement . . . Not to mention wanting to take full advantage of his experience as a member of SOLDIER. Barret was a canny leader, when he could control his temper, but he'd never been officially trained by the military.

AVALANCHE's hideout became a bit cramped with Barret, his motley crew of rebels, and Cloud and Tifa crowding into the relatively small bunker that night. The mercenary found a spot on the back wall, sitting on crate of grenades Jesse had "acquired" some time ago - Cloud noted a bit of dried blood on the side of the crate - he watched the rebels begin their planning, laying out the rough ideas for the assault. The basic plan was simple, just like the last mission: break into a reactor and blow the hell out of it. Execution, on the other hand, would be tricky.

"Cloud," Jesse had asked from her spot at the computer monitor. "How long will it take Shinra to fully mobilize their forces against us?"

"In terms of setting up martial law and locking down the streets . . . ." He mused for a moment. "I'd say we can expect Shinra to have the upper streets of Midgar under constant patrol in under twelve hours, and fully lock down the plates in twenty-four. It'll take them about as long to set up security over the gates in each sector of the slums. And once that happens our movements will be a lot more limited."

"So, we can scrap the last plan," Biggs commented. "No escaping through the upper streets."

"Shinra will have the trains locked down tight," Tifa added with a nod. "We might be able to use them going in, but coming out is out of the question."

"Frontal assault like last time will be suicide," Cloud added. "They'll have tripled the defenses protecting the Reactors to guard against us attacking from that direction again."

"So, we'll have to sneak in," Jesse responded. Her fingers played over the keyboard for a few moments, and she brought up a map of the area surrounding their target, Mako Reactor Number Five. After a few more moments, she highlighted three areas, lines leading from outside locations into the reactor complexes.

"There," she said, smiling, her tone satisfied. The others gathered around her monitor. "Each of these routes are maintenance accessways leading into the reactor complex."

"These two are on the plates," Wedge pointed out, his chubby finger tapping two of the screen. "If Cloud's right, by morning we'll have Shinra patrols all over the place. We'll never be able to move around and get into these accessways."

"This one," Jesse said, tapping the last highlighted route on her screen. "This one is in the train tunnels."

"That's a damn far hike," Barret complained, and the others nodded, noting the distance between their base and the accessway.

"We can ride the train to Sector Five," Tifa suggested. "Then hop off as we near our target."

"Good idea," Jesse replied. "And . . . It looks like this accessway opens into the underside of the plate. We'll use the catwalks and additional maintenance passages to reach the Reactor. From what I can see, it looks like this route will actually drop us off right outside the elevator that leads into the lower reactor levels."

"We can plant th' bomb 'fore they even know we're there!" Barret said with a smile. "I like this!"

"How about extraction?" Cloud asked.

"Once we set the bomb, we withdraw as normal," Jesse replied. "But instead of using the trains on the upper levels, we use the underground tunnels to get back to Sector Seven. There's thousands of passages under the plate. Shinra can't cover them all."

"Hmph," Barret muttered. "Guess a one-way hike is better than a two way."

"This will need to be handled very delicately," Cloud surmised as he considered the plan. "One team goes in to plant the bomb while another element supports them by covering the entrance and arranging the withdrawal." Jesse nodded, poring over the maps.

"I can work something up. Give me a little bit of time."

"And while she's workin' on that, we tool up," Barret added with a snort. He glanced to the others. "Getcha' gear ready!" He pointed to Biggs and Wedge. "You two are gonna work with Jesse on preppin' extraction! You three'll keep the doors open while we go on and plant th' bomb!"

"Then the assault element will be us?" Cloud asked, not surprised.

"You, me, and Tifa," Barret replied with a nod. Cloud glanced over at Tifa, who herself nodded, confirming Barret's words. Cloud arched an eyebrow, a bit skeptical. Barret was a powerful, hardened tank of a man with a cybernetic gun-arm for a right hand. Cloud was an ex-SOLDIER. But Tifa . . . .

"What?" she asked, frowning. She crossed her arms over her chest, scowling slightly at Cloud's skeptical look. "You don't think I can handle myself?"

"I never said that," Cloud responded. "But we're dealing with the Shinra military here. I've heard stories about what disciples of Zangan-Ken-Ryuu can do, but can it hold up to Shinra's weapons?"

Tifa's confident smirk dispelled some of Cloud's uncertainty. On any other person her age, Cloud would have passed it off as youthful overconfidence, one of the biggest killers for many young soldiers. But Tifa's expression was one of certain confidence, the smile of someone who understood the danger, and knew without question that they were capable of handling it. Not to mention Tifa was the last person Cloud would expect to think way too highly of her capabilities.

"Tifa's one helluva fighter," Barret added, just for emphasis, and Cloud nodded.

In truth, Cloud was still a bit concerned for Tifa. Even a master of Zangan-Ken-Ryuu style martial arts might not be able to stand up to Shinra war machines. But if Tifa was confident in herself and Barret backed her up, Cloud figured she'd hold her own, at least.

"Listen, when we go in there," Barret added, glancing to Cloud. "You take the lead in th' assault."

"You have the most experience with this type of operation anyway," Tifa added. Cloud considered their words for a moment, and then nodded.

"If you want me to," he replied.

The planning continued for some time afterward, as the rebels plotted insertion routes and contingency plans. Jesse decided to modify their I.D. cards, and would implant fresh data onto the Shinra security servers that night, so they wouldn't be potentially flagged if the corporate technicians had found their fake data. Biggs and Wedge assembled their weapons and gear: three sub-machineguns, a dozen grenades for each rebel, several flares, pistols, boxes of ammunition. Medical gear, and the like. Barret busied himself with cleaning and loading his gun-arm as Jesse finished the assault planning.

Cloud separated himself from the others, and took off the bracer over his left forearm, green and blue light shining as he adjusted the armor straps. He checked the armor piece over, and shook his head. The metal was battered and damaged after a lot of long-term use. He'd have to replace it soon.

Barret was running some lubricant through one of his barrels as Cloud was checking his own gear out, and noted glimmering motes of light set into the armor, within a series of small round hollows running the length of the piece. The rebel leader blinked as he saw the light, and knew what it signified.

"Materia?" he remarked, and Cloud glanced up, nodding. He ran a finger over four small green spots of light, which ordinarily didn't glow unless the armor itself was disturbed in some manner.

"Basic spell Materia," Cloud responded. "Fire, electrical, and ice-based, and one for healing magic. Nothing really special."

"Hell, far as I'm concerned that's pretty special that you've got some," Barret replied. "None of us have Materia. Well, 'cept for Tifa."

Tifa, who had been going over the plans with Jesse, wandered over, drawn by both the mention of her name and the rare non-confrontational conversation between Barret and Cloud. Cloud glanced up at her as she approached, and she nodded. She reached into a pocket in her shorts and pulled out a pair of hard leather gloves, with chitinous metal plates covering the back of the hands, knuckles, and fingers. She touched one of the plates, and there was a flare of green and blue light as she did so.

"I didn't know you could use Materia," Cloud mused. She shrugged.

"Sensei taught me," she responded simply.

"Well, at least we'll be well-armed when we go in," Cloud remarked as he slipped his boots off.

Materia orbs were concentrated blobs of Mako energy. No one was precisely sure how they came about, but there were numerous theories, among them that Mako "currents" in the pools of Mako energy inside reactors would cause enough of the energy to collide that it formed solid balls. Of course, that didn't explain how some Materia was encountered in odd locations; some orbs had been found in deep wilderness hundreds of miles from any reactor. Some said that any location with abundant life energy would form Materia orbs.

But regardless of however the orbs were created, they all worked in a roughly similar fashion. Many pieces of armor or weapons, or any piece of clothing or jewelry, could be fitted with special "slots" that absorbed the Materia into them. Once absorbed into the armor, the Materia had various effects, the most common of which was to interact between the Mako energy running through the planet and the wielder of the orb, calling forth various effects, often dubbed "magic." Then, there were other Materia orbs with different effects, most often spreading the power and strength of other Materia over wide ranges, linking different effects from different Materia together, strengthening the user's mind or body, and so on. Shinra had an entire research division devoted to studying the intricacies of Materia orbs and their uses.

But none of that mattered to Cloud at that moment. The mercenary walked back across the room and sat atop the crate of grenades he had been seated on earlier, setting his blade's harness against the wall. He dropped his boots beside the weapon, and his bracer and shoulder guard atop them. He laid his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.

"You takin' a nap?" Barret replied, surprised.

"We need to rest up for the next mission," Tifa replied, and glanced at the mercenary, to see him already deep asleep.

* * *

It was much later that night when Cloud felt a nudge against his shoulder. Trained as he was, the mercenary was instantly awake, sitting up, hand snapping for his blade. His hands wrapped around the handle and his glowing blue eyes scanned the darkened interior of the room when a warm hand closed over his mouth.

"Shh! Cloud," came a soft voice, and Cloud traced the fingers and the hand over his mouth back up to Tifa. The underground bunker was dark, lit only by the lights of Jesse's skull and crossbones screensaver on her computer monitor. The other rebels were all asleep around the small bunker, with Barret's thunderous snores filling the room.

"What is it?" he whispered, looking round for any threats. However, judging by Tifa's relaxed posture and slight smile, visible even in this dim light, there was no enemy bursting through their doors up above.

"Get your sword," she told him, and moved toward the elevator. He blinked, not sure what she meant, and was momentarily distracted by her slightly bouncing, almost eager gait. But as she neared the elevator, he saw Tifa take out her gloves and slip them on. She glanced back at him, and he understood. The mercenary rose, and strapped on his boots, before mounting his harness and heavy blade on his back. He moved across the room quietly, stepping over Biggs' slender form as he snorted in his dreams. Cloud joined Tifa on the elevator, and rode it up into the bar.

She led him outside into the small slum town, and cut between the various shanty buildings. Cloud pursued, keeping a wary eye out; it was still technically nighttime in Midgar, though the only difference was that not as many people were out. It was hard to tell the difference between daytime and nighttime in the slums when the plates blocked out all light.

Tifa came to a stop at the edge of the shanty town, at an area that was relatively clear from debris, consisting of solid, flat brown dirt. It was secluded, clear, and quiet. Perfect. Cloud watched as Tifa did a quick calf stretch, bending one knee while stretching her other leg out as she dropped low to the ground.

"You're serious about this?" Cloud asked. "The mission's good to go in-" he checked his watch "-four hours?"

"Barret pushed it back to mid-day," Tifa replied as she alternated legs. "We figured we'd have more of an impact with a strike in broad daylight. Not to mention it'll make Shinra look like fools."

"Gives me more time for beauty sleep," Cloud remarked, setting a hand on his sword. He glanced over his shoulder at the weapon, and then at Tifa's slender body, and winced. She saw the look on his face as she did a quad stretch, pulling one of her legs back.

"Look, Cloud, I know you," she responded. "Doesn't matter how much I assure you or Barret praises me. You're still uncertain about whether I can hold my own out there. I don't blame you, either." She switched legs as Cloud nodded quietly. "_I_ wouldn't want someone on my team if _I_ didn't know they could keep up, protect themselves, and watch my back. I wouldn't be able to trust them either." She finished the quad stretch and planted her feet on the ground, before smiling.

"So, Cloud. If I can keep up with a First Class SOLDIER, you think you can trust me?"

A smirk cut across Cloud's features, and he slowly pulled his heavy blade free. Tifa raised her hands into a guard, balancing evenly on her toes, legs shoulder-width apart. Slowly, Cloud mimicked her stance, spreading his legs out, and putting both hands on the handle of his heavy sword. He stared into her eyes, and she slowly, subtly nodded.

Tifa scooted forward in an eye-blink, cutting to Cloud's left. He shifted, bringing his sword to bear, watching her movements, caught off-guard by her sudden speed. Tifa shifted in mid-step, cutting to Cloud's right. He snapped his sword forward, swing across with the heavy flat of the blade. Yet, even as he moved, she was taking a wide step to the left, ducking beneath the blade in a single smooth motion. She shot forward, left arm shooting out and catching the blade of the weapon and holding it out to the side with her left hand, while her right arced in with a stunningly hard hook to Cloud's ribs. He barely registered the hit when Tifa slammed her fist up into his jaw hard enough to rock Cloud's head back-

-and at the same time her right knee rose up into his ribs, slamming into the exact same spot her hook had struck before. Cloud's head was still moving backward when Tifa shot her right leg back. He brought his head forward, pain flaring through his jaw and rib as Tifa set her weight on her right leg and flew backward in a backflip kick. Her boot slammed into Cloud's chin, once more in the same spot as her fist had struck, and he was sent reeling, stumbling backward.

The mercenary set his feet, however, recovering shockingly fast, but not before Tifa had hopped back out of easy striking range of his sword. He shook his head, rubbing his jaw, and eyed Tifa with new respect.

"That hurt," he remarked. "Good hit."

"Thanks," she replied, grinning behind her raised fists. He watched her bounce slightly, shifting guard and putting her right leg forward, shoulder angled toward Cloud with her right hand low and forward, left hand high and beside her face.

"Show me what you've got, Tifa," Cloud added quietly. He shot forward two quick steps, heavy blade arcing out in a wide one-handed slash at Tifa. She ducked beneath the chopping blade's flat, stepping forward into a high left kick. Cloud's left hand disengaged from his sword and shot up, blocking the kick with a thud of boot on forearm, but Tifa suddenly alternated, completely shifting her momentum into a jumping high right kick. Cloud had no idea how she pulled it off, but he was caught completely off-guard when her foot crashed into the side of his face, the sheer force behind the blow spinning him around.

Cloud's blade shot around behind his back as he spun away from Tifa, and her boots slammed into its flat as she planted a double kick against it, clearly intending to strike his exposed backside. He came back around, sword swinging out wide, but Tifa was already dropping beneath it. As it passed, she rose up, planting one-two-three rapid uppercuts to his stomach, followed by a sudden palm strike to his injured jaw, and a rising knee to his gut, all in the span of a single second. Cloud managed to take a single step backward, and she dropped low into a sweep, taking out his forward leg. The mercenary stumbled forward, and s blindingly-fast open palmed uppercut rose into his forehead, snapping Cloud's head backward and complete reversing his downward momentum, flipping him backward into the air.

Cloud's left hand shot down as he flipped over, touching the ground and giving him a solid support that let him somersault back into a standing position. His right arm pointed out, blade extended to ward off another strike by Tifa as he recovered, to which she skittered around to his right. Cloud pivoted, blade moving across, flat presented at her as a shield, blocking her arcing side kick. Her boot rang against the heavy sword, but then she alternated, her other foot rising into an axe kick that came down on top of the sword's flat. Her foot planted against the edge of the sword, and she pushed up, her entire weight rising up on that one foot for an instant, lifting her up off the ground and over Cloud's blade.

Her other boot slammed into Cloud's temple with shocking force, flipping the mercenary over to crash solidly to the ground, dazed and shocked by the insanity of that last move.

"How did . . ." he muttered, standing up, shaking his head.

"_Ki_ manipulation," Tifa replied. "Zangan-Ken-Ryuu focuses on combining the various forms of other martial arts and then channeling the bodies' own spiritual power into every movement." She grinned to her self as she fell into her typical stance. Cloud slid into a guard of his own, nodding to himself.

"How hard can you it with that?" he asked her.

"That last hit probably would have killed you if I had been serious," she replied. "Let's leave it at that, hm?"

Cloud chuckled to himself, and rushed in again with a hard overhead chop. Tifa skittered to Cloud's left, around the attack, and shot ahead in a high kick at Cloud's head. His left hand snapped across in a quick block that threw her foot aside, and, to her momentary surprise Cloud shot ahead in a brutal forward kick of his own. His leg shot toward her head, but Tifa spun back to her right, hands shooting up and catching Cloud's foot. She pivoted and pulled, and Cloud suddenly found himself flipping over her shoulder. He crashed hard into the dirt, facedown, and flipped over quickly. His feet jabbed forward at Tifa's legs, partially kicking them out from under her. She managed to dive forward, and led her fall onto Cloud with a powerful punch to his gut that had him almost double over, groaning in agony at the hit to his stomach.

Cloud settled back to the dirt, and chuckled for a moment, before realizing that Tifa was still on top of him. He looked up at her for a moment, blinking in surprise at the proximity of their bodies . . . And oddly, he could say that it felt good. He could tell from the surprised and slightly confused expression on Tifa's face that she felt much the same way. But then, after a moment of that awkward proximity and uncertainty, she managed a smile.

"How did I do?" she asked him. "You think you can trust me now that I kicked your ass?" Cloud managed a chuckle and a nod. Laughing as well, Tifa pushed herself up off of Cloud and stood up. She reached down, offering him a hand, and he gladly took it, standing up. She casually dusted off her knees, while Cloud patted off the dirt on the rest of his clothes.

"Didn't expect you to be that fast," he remarked, and noticed Tifa taking off her gloves. She stretched her arms for a second, and then glanced back at the mercenary, before waving for him to head back to the bar. With a shrug, Cloud picked up his dropped sword and followed her.

"You were holding back on me, weren't you?" she accused with a grin, and Cloud managed another shrug. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and put one in his mouth. She looked back at him again, but this time with a critical expression.

"Smoking?" she asked as Cloud lit up the coffin nail. The merc nodded.

"Not like it can kill me," he remarked. "Mako infusions make it impossible for the carcinogens to affect my body. I'm immune to cancer now."

"Just don't smoke that thing inside," she responded. "Barret hates that stuff."

"Thought he'd love cigarettes," Cloud responded under his breath as they walked back toward the bar. "His breath is bad enough." Tifa burst out laughing at that remark, and for a moment, Cloud felt like he was back home at Nibelhiem.

That brought back more memories, and he rapidly banished them, taking another inhalation of smoke to clear his thoughts as they neared the bar. They had a mission in the morning. No time to get nostalgic.

Especially with memories of Nibelhiem and Sephiroth . . . .


	4. Plunge Into Chaos

_**Chapter 3: Plunge into Chaos**_

It was midday when a trio of tough-looking and well-armed figures boarded the Sector Five train leaving the slums. In actuality, it was six well-armed figures, but the first three, Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge, were clad in nondescript clothing, and all of their weapons and combat gear were in a series of duffel bags that they were carrying. They boarded the front cars, doing an excellent job of not drawing much attention from either the civilian citizenry or the four Shinra corporate police who were moving through the cars, clearly visible with their red uniforms and hats.

Barret, Cloud, and Tifa, however, had opted to board the last train car at the station, the one that was generally "reserved" for the more unsavory elements of Midgar's slum society. With Tifa not wearing her combat gloves and Barret's gun arm and ammo belts covered up by another heavy trench coat, the trio managed to conceal most of their weaponry and tried to look fairly inconspicuous, though Cloud was unable to cover up his huge sword. Rather than try to hide the weapon, he wore it openly, and as he stepped onto the train car, he assumed an aggressive demeanor and pose, warding off any of the assorted punks and street trash. The fact that he carried a weapon openly was not much noticed by the unsavory bunch inhabiting the last car, many of whom either wore weapons openly or had them secreted away on their person.

Between Barret's size and Cloud's demeanor, which included an icy stare that promised general pain and unpleasantness to anyone who bothered their small group, the trio had dug out a relatively private corner of the train for themselves.

"Okay, recap," Cloud muttered as Barret sat down, plopping the duffel bag that carried their explosives and extra grenades onto the seat beside him.

"Its 11:40," Barret commented, glancing at a watch on his left hand. "We got eight minutes 'till th' first ID checkpoint."

"Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge are going to forcibly cut the brakes in and slow the train down in seven minutes," Tifa told him. "As the train slows down, we step off and into the tunnel. Since the ID system only checks the train, we should be able to slip through the tunnels and past the checkpoint."

"And a quarter mile up the tunnel is th' vent shaft that opens into the underside of th' Plate," Barret added. "An' from there we just move along the bottom of th' Plate 'till we reach the reactor."

"Sneak in, set the bomb, and clear out before anyone knows we're there," Cloud finished. "Use the same tunnel exits that we used last time to extract, except we'll have to cut through the subway tunnels to make it back to Sector Seven."

"And Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge will have those tunnels open and ready for us," Tifa added.

"Sounds like a good plan," Cloud remarked. He glanced at his watch. "Its 11:42 now, so we've got six-"

Blood red lights suddenly flashed throughout the train, erupting from the walls all around the group. The normal lights cut out, casting the interior of the train into bloody light and pitch black shadows as the strobing illumination cut through the car. Blasting klaxons could suddenly be heard, nearly deafening the rebels and everyone else on the train.

"The hell?" Barret demanded.

"The ID scanner?" Tifa said, surprised. "Wasn't it supposed to be further down?" Even as she was speaking, Cloud was grabbing his sword. He moved to one of the windows and punched it hard with his other hand, shattering the glass, heedless of the small chunks of glass that stuck into his skin as he poked his head out the window. He looked out for a moment, before withdrawing his head, a grim look on his face.

"The hell's going on?" Barret demanded over the din of the alarms as Cloud started moving toward the front of the car.

"Shinra response forces," Cloud answered matter-of-factly. "Airborne police units and aerial troopers. They're right behind the train. We have to get out of here!"

"A trap?" Tifa asked, and Cloud shook his head.

"If it was we'd be swarmed by Shinra troops right now," he replied as they reached the door. He threw it open and stepped between the rear car and the next one. As he did so, wind whipped past, buffeting his hair. The klaxons whine intermixed with the roar of the passing air and the rattle of the train as it rolled down the tunnel. Not hesitating, Cloud spun around and leapt straight up, grabbing the edge of the roof of the train car they had exited, and pulled himself up. He looked over the top again, just as the Shinra robots and aerial troopers landed on the rear car.

In the dim lights of the tunnel, the mercenary saw what looked like a full squad of eight soldiers, clad in light purple and red armor and jumpsuits, with goggles and helmets. They wore what looked like miniature helicopter rotors on their left arms, which folded up as they set foot on the train, and carried machine pistols in their right hands. Surrounding them were several delicate flower-like machines, hovering in the air over the train car: Shinra aerial scout drones. Several of the men moved up the roof of the train, while others dropped down the sides and entered the vehicles, the drones dropping to window-level and moving up the car, scanning the interior. Cloud quickly ducked back down and rejoined Barret and Tifa as they entered the next car.

"We have to keep moving," he told them. "Shinra troops are following and sweeping every car."

Without another word, the trio started moving up the length of the car, pushing past surprised and fearful citizens, Barret struggling to get his bulk down the train as quickly as he could. Cloud glanced over his shoulder, and saw through the window between cars that the Shinra aerial forces had almost finished the sweep of their current car and were moving up to this one.

"Run!" he urged, and the other two rebels needed no encouragement, rushing through the train car and out the door at the far end. They burst into the next vehicle, and started hurrying down it, when one of the Shinra police officers watching the train stepped into their path, noting their apparent haste to avoid being caught.

"You, hold it!" he ordered. "You're to stay put until inspected by-"

Tifa, in the lead, planted a solid uppercut to the man's stomach, and he doubled over, letting out a shocked, pained wheeze. She shoved the stunned officer aside onto a group of passengers, and the rebels continued up the length of the train, running as fast as they could. They rushed into the next car-

"Freeze!" came a shout, and Tifa instinctively dropped to the floor as she saw a pistol pointed at her. The brief scuffle in the previous car must have alerted the Shinra police elsewhere in the train; the remaining trio of officers watching the train were waiting in the next car, pistols out and leveled at the rebels as they burst in. Barret, snarling, took a step to the side, but didn't raise his gun-arm; the 20mm rounds would tear straight through the officers and easily kill innocent civilians on the train.

Cloud, however, had no such problems with his Materia, and a flash of light came from his bracer. He stepped around Barret, gesturing at the police, and a bolt of flame shot from his fingers, stabbing into one man and sending him staggering back, his uniform erupting into flames as the fire cored through his chest, igniting his organs. The other two officers panicked and opened fire, their shots flying wildly in the face of the sudden attack and flare of light. One round slammed into Barret's body armor, and another scratched the side of his face, while others impacted the walls behind the rebel leader.

Tifa pushed herself off the floor and leapt at the Shinra police, sweeping both legs forward in a scissors kick that threw one of the men to the ground, his legs entangled. Tifa rapidly flipped over, pushing up into a standing position as the other officer turned toward her, pointing his pistol down at her. Her hands flashed at the man's weapon even before she was finished standing up, one clamping over the pistol, another stabbing at his wrist. Searing pain shot through his hand as the officer's wrist shattered, and two quick strikes to his face with her plated gloves sent the officer flying backward against one of the walls. He slumped into a seat, neck broken by the shockingly powerful impacts. Barret was right behind Tifa, slamming a boot into the head of the prone officer she had tripped, crushing his backbone.

"Go go _go!"_ Cloud called behind them, and Barret rushed ahead of the group, with Tifa and Cloud following, leaving the shocked and horrified passengers behind. They moved toward the next train car, and through the flashing red lights, they were able to see the other members of their team gathered near one of the exterior doors of the car at the far end. The rebels hurried toward Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge, Barret plowing through the door connecting the two cars, with Tifa and Cloud a step behind.

But as Barret passed through, the door suddenly slammed shut of its own accord, locking in place with a solid metallic _click._

"Security lock!" Cloud shouted, and he rammed the door with his shoulder, only to rebound off the unyielding metal. Tifa moved in as he bounded away, planting a solid, powerful kick to the doorframe, only to see it dent slightly.

"What is this thing made out of?" she muttered as she kicked it again. Cloud shook his head as her foot slammed the solid metal door again, and he turned, toward the exterior doorway that let the passengers step out onto the platform. A plan suddenly formed in his mind. That door was unlocked -_ after all, who would be crazy enough to jump from a moving train?_ - and opened when the mercenary pulled the handle.

"Cloud, what are you-" Tifa asked, but then he grabbed her arm and pulled her close.

"Hold on!" he told her.

"Are you _going_ to-" she demanded, and he nodded. The mercenary scooped up the woman into his arms, and she grabbed onto him, holding on tight. He stepped forward and leapt out of the moving train car, legs hurling the both of them clear. The train rushed past, the muffled roar of wheels on tracks now clearly audible in their ears as they plummeted toward the pavement below-

Cloud slammed into the concrete tunnel floor, and rolled over, grunting in pain as his body bounced over the pavement at high speeds, clothes tearing against the concrete. He hugged Tifa tightly to him, shielding her from the brunt of the impact with the floor. They bounced across the tunnel, and then slammed into the wall, Cloud's back blasting in sudden pain.

Several seconds passed, and there was only silence, the train having left them behind before they'd gone halfway across the tunnel. Cloud opened his eyes, and looked down at Tifa, who as still holding on tightly.

"You okay?" he asked, slowly loosening his grip. She did so as well, pulling back, and managed a nod.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. "But . . . Are you . . . ."

"Nothing serious," Cloud replied, releasing her. Tifa slowly, almost reluctantly, released him, and stood up. She looked down at him with a degree of concern, noting his torn clothes, but he waved her questions away as he stood up, popping h is neck as he did so. Aches were stretching across his body, but he ignored the minor pains, knowing that the scrapes and wounds would be meaningless in a few hours. With a quick check to ensure his heavy sword was still secure in its sheath on his back, the mercenary looked around the tunnel.

"Now what are we going to do?" Tifa asked, and Cloud shrugged.

"We were prepared for this," he replied. "In case we got separated, we all continue on to the objective and meet up beneath the plate. Barret and the others probably jumped further down the tunnel and will be waiting for us to arrive."

Tifa didn't argue with Cloud's logic; that was the provision that had been made in case they were separated prior to arriving at the reactor.

"I figure we only had a few minutes before we were going to jump off anyway," Tifa added. "We shouldn't be too far down the tunnel from the others."

"Then we'd better get moving," Cloud added. "Once Shinra finds no one suspicious is on the train, they may start combing the tunnels for us."

The dark, oil-streaked tunnel stretched on in a long arc into the distance, twisting and turning along its route, with a very gradual incline that was barely noticeable. The pair moved up the silent passage, taking care to avoid the middle rails of the train tracks on either side. The passage was shrouded in darkness, lit only by overhead maintenance lights, a few of which were out of order.

Cloud moved ahead of Tifa, his glowing eyes cutting through the darkness, his enhanced sight superior to Tifa's normal eyes. He kept looking to either side as they moved up the tunnel, hugging the left side of the passage and staying in the relative obscurity of the shadows. They both monitored the signs along the length of the tunnel, which kept informing them of the distance between their current location and the next station, which was coincidentally very close to the reactor.

Nearly twenty minutes passed as Cloud and Tifa worked their way up the passage, but it seemed as if no Shinra forces had been sent to sweep the tunnels . . . Or at least, none had been mobilized by that time. The tunnels were very long; it could be a while before Shinra patrols swept the area, if they even bothered.

As the pair advanced up the passage, Cloud saw a glow in the gloom of the tunnel some distance ahead, and for a moment he thought that Shinra patrols had indeed come down to search the area. However, after a second's hesitation, the mercenary realized what the source of the glimmer really was, and managed to relax.

"What is it?" Tifa asked as he moved up the tunnel at a faster pace. They rounded a gradual bend, and came across what looked like a square metal archway stretching across the tunnel, with glowing yellow-green beams of light shooting across it.

"Shinra security sensors," Cloud explained. "Another ID checkpoint." Tifa scanned the device for a moment, and nodded as she saw a number along the side.

"This is the same one that Jesse mentioned," she commented.

"And if that's the case, our accessway down to the underside of the plate should be somewhere around . . . ." Cloud looked around the tunnel, checking the walls, and found a hatch. He pulled it open, to reveal a small passage leading down below. And, more telling, was what looked like the casing to one of Barret's 20mm rounds lying right inside. That was as sure a marker as anything that the others had come down this way, though Cloud was surprised Barret could fit down such a tiny hole.

"Come on," he called to Tifa, and the pair moved into the small passage, crawling down the metal tunnel. It was dark and cramped, just like everything else in the underside of the plates, but after about thirty seconds the pair of rebels emerged into another, larger metal passage that ended in a hatch with a ladder, which opened up into warm midday air. Cloud poked his head out through the hatch, and saw a latticework of catwalks and platforms running along the underside of the plate, the distant fires and lights and trash mounds of the slums far below. Directly beneath the ladder was a small wooden platform suspended above several more metal platforms and walkways, with another ladder connecting them. The pair moved out of the shaft and dropped quietly to the platform below, where Cloud looked out over the

A whisper of motion along the metal paths caught Cloud's attention, and he spotted a trio of Shinra soldiers walking the length of the walkways, rifles slung over their shoulders as they moved flashlights across the dim metal latticework. They were clearly a routine patrol, probably recently added after the bombing last night, and from their slow, lazy motions and the slung weapons, they clearly weren't. expecting trouble. Cloud took a step behind cover and informed Tifa, who considered the problem for a moment.

"What's their patrol route?" she asked, and Cloud glanced back down, noting how the enemy soldiers were moving. They were advancing steadily across the catwalks and platforms running beneath the plates, occasionally pausing and constantly chatting between themselves. Some quick observation showed that the men weren't keeping much of an eye on their surroundings; Cloud noted several easy routes that would have allowed him to approach the Shinra guards without them noticing.

"They'll walk right under this platform in a moment," he commented, and Tifa nodded. Cloud quietly drew his sword, keeping the blade low to the wood so it wouldn't be seen. As the Shinra soldiers moved closer, he pointed a finger to himself, and motioned to the right. Tifa nodded, understanding. They crouched lower to the wood, and waited for the beams from the flashlights to pass beneath them, and start moving past, and then rose. Both moved forward, off the platform, and dropped down upon the Shinra troopers.

Cloud landed atop the leftmost soldier, slamming him down to the ground under his sheer weight, and whirled on the center man, sword flashing down upon him before he'd even realized anything was amiss. The blade chopped into his shoulder and down through his torso, crushing and cleaving at the same time. Beside him, Tifa lithely landed behind the rightmost soldier and quickly wrapped one arm around his neck, gripping his chin, while the other pressed against the back of his neck. Pulling back with one arm and jabbing forward with the other, she sent a sickening wet crunch through the still air, and the soldier went limp. Cloud pulled his sword out of the broken, bloody mess that made up the cloven soldier before him, and smashed his left leg down on the remaining, prone soldier's helmet, crushing it like a beer can.

The sentries dealt with before they'd even known they were under attack, the pair of rebels turned and started moving across the platform, both using the mental maps they had made after reviewing Jesse's assault plan. They hurried across the platforms, eyes open for anymore patrols or enemy static defenses, as well as any sign that the others had made it off the train.

* * *

The Shinra Power Company could be accused of having a slow, inefficient, bureaucratic system, and sometimes, those accusations held true, though anyone leveling them typically ended up mysteriously evicted from their homes, losing their jobs, and forced to live in the slums of Midgar or any other major city. However, Shinra did a reasonable job cutting costs and making operations fairly streamlined, and their military was surprisingly efficient, well-trained, and well-equipped. In particular, the Shinra army's communications were well-oiled and very fast.

When a small patrol covering one of the accessways beneath Sector Five's plate failed to report back at its usual ten minute interval, and the missing patrol happened to be in the general area where an alert had been sounded on a train where three police officers had been killed, the Shinra Colonel commanding the garrison in Sector Five noticed. In less than two minutes after he had taken note of the two perilously close incidents, the news had made its way back to the central Shinra HQ in the heart of Midgar, and had reached the ears of Shinra General Ernst Heidegger, the powerfully built, heavy-set commander of the Shinra military.

The general, who had been seated in the heart of the Shinra war room on Floor 58 of the building, considered the two coinciding reports. Three dead officers, another battered, all on a train where several suspicious alerts had sounded at the same time. And then, less than half an hour's walking distance from that alert, three missing soldiers, along the accessways beneath the plate, which could potentially lead directly to the heart of the Sector Five Mako Reactor.

Heidegger, despite his annoying horse-like laugh, massive black beard, and wide girth, was not a particularly stupid man. He could easily put the information together. He sat back in his chair, stroked his beard as he considered the data, and looked to the man beside him, clad in a dark blue business suit.

"Tseng," he asked his subordinate, the head of Shinra's Special Operations division, known as the Turks. "What are you thinking of this?"

"Train alert, dead police, missing soldiers along an access that could give the enemy a clear shot at one of our reactors," Tseng replied with a shrug, his long black hair swaying with the motion. The Shinra spy scratched his own slight goatee and mustache. "It seems fairly obvious: AVALANCHE are hungry for more carnage, and they're going after the Sector Five Reactor."

"Glad you agree," Heidegger replied. He tapped a control on his chair, opening his intercom. A small television screen appeared and slid up on the arm of his chair, displaying the Shinra logo for a second, until it was replaced by the form of Alexander Louis Shinra, seated at his desk.

"Ernst," the President asked in a bit of surprise. "You have news for me?"

"AVALANCHE is about to attack the Sector Five Reactor, sir," Heidegger stated. Shinra considered this for a moment, and then nodded.

"You are certain?" he asked, and Heidegger gave his leader a firm nod. "Very well then. Have the battalion commanders of Sectors Four and Five seal off the areas around the reactor on the upper plates." He paused. "And prep two attack helicopters. They will escort my personal chopper to the site."

"Yes sir," Heidegger replied. "Shall I alert the reactor garrison as well?"

"No," Shinra responded. "In fact, pull all of them out. Let AVALANCHE do what they came to do. It'll be good press, letting them destroy another reactor before Shinra's valiant forces could trap them and destroy them completely."

"Are you sure, sir?" Heidegger asked. "I agree that it'll solidify our support among the masses, but . . . lose another reactor? Can we afford to?"

Shinra considered what Heidegger said, and sat back in his plush chair.

"It Tachibana there?"

"Yes sir," Tseng replied, bristling at the use of his first name. The Turk commander stepped into view of the small camera mounted in Heidegger's chair.

"Have we located our quarry?" Shinra asked, and the Turk nodded.

"I have Reno, Rude, and a strike team heading down to Sector Five's slums. They'll have our target in custody soon."

"Then any losses from the destruction of this reactor will be meaningless," Shinra responded. "Carry out your orders, gentlemen. That is all."

* * *

Jessie's plan had specified that they locate one of several hatches hidden underneath the plate along this route, and after roughly ten minutes of moving down the length of catwalks and platforms, Cloud spotted a metal hatch set into a tunnel atop a ladder. The pair swiftly scaled the ladder, and upon reaching the hatch, Cloud confirmed that it was the one they had been seeking. Cloud and Tifa climbed into the small, cramped tunnel beyond, and moved up the passageway for several more minutes, before emerging into a small engineering chamber somewhere beneath the plate, spanned by another metal platform and a catwalk, leading to another passageway beyond.

A faint noxious fume crept through the air, and Cloud wrinkled his brow. Tifa sniffed the air as well, and mimicked Cloud's motion. He glanced back to her and opened his mouth to say something about the Mako odor.

"Fuck, it stinks 'n this shithole!" came a sudden voice from the far end of the room, and both rebels suddenly felt a profound sense of relief at the gruff tone.

"Barret!" Tifa called, and the hatch leading into the passage beyond opened, and Barret's familiar crewcut and beard were visible beyond.

"Tifa!" he called, happy to see his comrades safe and secure. He looked to the mercenary beside her as they walked across the platform. "And Cloud! You're late, bitch!"

"Glad to see you too," the merc answered dryly as they crossed the catwalk. "Is the target clear?"

"The others' have been scoutin' ahead," Barret responded, stepping away from the hatch and letting the pair join him in the short tunnel beyond. "Jessie's working up an escape plan while Biggs and Wedge checked out the route to the reactor. Figured we'd lost you two, or at least that ya wouldn't be makin' it to the target."

"Well, it _was_ a bit of a hike from where we had to abandon the train," Tifa replied, and Cloud nodded. Barret shrugged, and patted the duffel bag he was carrying over his shoulder.

"We still have th' bombs, an' Shinra's still stupid. Had some trouble, but nothing we can't get past!" The burly rebel waved his gun arm in the air, indicating they should follow him. The smaller pair nodded, and Cloud pulled the hatch shut behind him. He started down the corridor, but then paused and glanced back at the hatch.

"Everyone is up ahead, right?" he asked, and Barret nodded. "Good." Cloud moved over to the metal hatch and set a hand against the seam where the door meet the wall, and his materia flashed. A pulse of white-hot flame washed over the handle and the metal wall, and a second flash of light came from the gauntlet he wore. Frigid cold sealed over the white-hot, flash-molten metal, and when the magic had finished its work, the door had been welded shut behind them.

"Now our backs are covered," he explained. "Standard SOLDIER technique for commando infiltration."

"Good thinkin'," Barret added. "Shinra can't walk up our backs with th' door shut like that."

Without any further discussion, the trio of reunited rebels moved up the passage, stepping through another long accessway within the seemingly never-ending tunnels and access junctures beneath the plate. The Mako smell was getting stronger; they had to be close.

As they entered yet another corridor, the trio nearly ran headlong into Jessie, the woman crouched over a wide paper map of the maze of tunnels beneath the plate, penlight in her mouth as she ran over several entries and exits of the tangle. She was absorbed in her work, but alert enough to look up when Barret came clomping up the passage. When she looked up, the surprisingly bright penlight flashed into her leader's face, causing him to yelp in surprise, his eyes dilated by the darkened bowels of Midgar.

"Whoops!" she gasped, the pen falling out of her mouth as she spoke. She deftly caught it and waved it back over the document, chuckling sheepishly. "Sorry, boss!" Barret growled something, but as everyone present already knew, his bark was really worse than his bite . . . Unless you were Shinra.

"You got an escape plan set up?" he asked, standing over the woman, and she nodded, the tails of her bandana leaping up and down with the exuberant motion.

"Hope it doesn't involve going back the way we came," Tifa remarked, and Jessie shrugged.

"That was one idea, but I scrapped it. Shinra's probably going to figure out how we entered this area sooner or later, and while it may be later, its likely going to be sooner." She tapped several spots on the map. "Our team is going to escape using one of several junctures I've found. If need be, we can rappel all the way back to the ground from beneath the plate."

"And what about us?" Cloud asked, and Jessie shook her head.

"No change to the original plan," she replied. "You'll escape using the access tunnels outside the reactor after planting the bomb. Shinra will be too busy dealing with the aftermath of the reactor's destruction to effectively track you through the tunnels. Just avoid the subway. While I don't think there are many patrols in there now, there will be sometime over the next few hours, after the stunts we pulled on the train." She paused, and then looked up to the trio, an apologetic expression on her face.

"Sorry about that, too," she added.

"Why?" Tifa asked, and Jessie shook her head.

"I altered the records we had put into Shinra's databases. I modified the code, so I think that's what triggered the alarms. This whole thing is my fault."

"Bah! Shut up!" Barret muttered. "Not yo' fault Shinra actually grew a fucking shit for a brain! If you hadn't fixed the Ids we would have been caught anyway! Stop beatin' yo'self up!" As Barret was giving his speech, another hatch swung open, and everyone present whirled toward it, bringing up knives, guns, and Materia.

"Whoa! Peace!" Biggs called holding up his hands. After a second, everyone stood down, and both he and Wedge stepped out of the passage.

"Route to the reactor is secured," Biggs stated, and Wedge nodded.

"But its weird," the portly rebel commented. "We didn't encounter any guards, drones, or even a sensor. Straight up this passage and through a vent around the corner is the lower level of the reactor, but there's _no_ security."

"Not even a locked door," Biggs added. Barret mulled over their words for a moment, as did Cloud and Tifa. Jessie looked over her schematics again and then shrugged.

"This is supposed to be a technical and maintenance area," she explained. "Very few guards needed, mostly just accessed by engineers. We never even encountered a patrol down here."

"We ran into one," Tifa explained. "But only three guards, and nothing else."

"Somethin' 'bout this ain't right," Barret muttered. After a few moments, the rebel leader shook his head. "But hell, if Shinra's gonna leave th' door wide open for us to shove this bomb up their asses, I say we take it!"

* * *

Barret's opinion won out. Ten minutes and a couple of vent shafts and corridors, and Cloud, Tifa, and Barret were inside the Sector Five Mako Reactor. They moved through the lower levels of the facility quickly and without incident, encountering no robotic or living sentries of any sort as they entered the chamber where the vast pool of Mako was stored and extracted. Standing atop the piping overlooking the vast, shimmering pool of untreated life force sucked from the planet, the trio of rebels felt a sudden unease.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," muttered Tifa, and Cloud shrugged. He opened his mouth to speak, but Barret cut him off.

"Tifa, you've always got a bad feeling 'bout _something._ Let's just blow this motherfucker and get the hell out of here before Shinra wakes up!"

"Agreed," Cloud responded quietly. "Tifa, you come with me. Barret, cover the entrance, make sure that none of Shinra's patrols walk up our backs. We'll plant the bomb." The others agreed, and Barret took up his defensive position at the entrance to the area, while Tifa accompanied Cloud in their rapid descent along the pipes and ladders that led down to the catwalk spanning the chamber.

The two rebels hurried across the bridge, but as they neared the vent that they would deposit the bomb within, Cloud felt a sudden sense of vertigo. he stopped, and clutched his head as a wave of intense dizziness cut through his brain. Tifa paused, and looked back at Cloud as he dropped to his knees, a flurry of thoughts and images coursing across his consciousness like vehicles on a highway. He closed his eyes, forcing the wave of mental images and memories and pulses of life to slow down or stop altogether. After several moments, the flow began to wear down, but even as the images and pulses began to do so, one flicker of thought and memory kept on moving, growing larger and more intense. Cloud found himself staring into something, a memory from his past that jarred him horribly. The mercenary started panting viciously as a wave of emotions crashed over him at the memory he was staring at, from a time so long ago, a time that had heralded a radical change in his life . . . .

_A Mako Reactor. Just like this one, except the solid concrete was replaced by mildewed walls and rusted steel. Instead of a myriad of pipes, a few large sets of piping connected to a much smaller pool of Mako below. Construction equipment was still in place above, massive chains hanging down almost to the same level as the bridge he stood upon. And instead of a vent shaft before him, there was a door, wrenched open like a massive beast had torn it off._

_And in front of that door, her knees soaked in a pool of blood, was Tifa._

_She was different. Younger. She wore a pack on her back, stuffed with mountaineering gear, and a wide-brimmed brown hat sat upon her head. She was kneeling on the cold concrete floor before a body, sliced apart by what seemed to be a hair-thing blade. The sobbing girl was cradling the body's head in her hands, shoulders rising and falling as tears poured down her face._

_"Papa?" she was saying. She repeated his name over and over again, shaking her head as she spoke._

_And then Cloud saw past her, at what lay beyond. He saw the blade he knew had killed Tifa's father._

_"Sephiroth . . . "she whispered. "SOLDIER . . . Mako reactors . . . Shinra . . . ." Tifa suddenly stood, and Cloud saw her grieving, tear-choked face flash with anger, a horrible mixture of sadness, betrayal, anger, hatred, and vengeance etching across her young face. She reached down, scooping up the weapon, a six-foot long _no-dachi_ sword, and started rushing into the breach beyond._

_"I hate them all!" she screamed, gripping the blade in white knuckled hands._

And then it was over.

Cloud was staring at the cold concrete of the bridge spanning the Sector Five Mako Reactor. There were no chains, no rusted metal, and no bisected corpse. he looked dup, and around. There was no wrenched open door to a hidden section of the reactor. Tifa was kneeling before him, but she was older, stronger. Her hands did not grip Sephiroth's sword, her knees weren't bathed in her father's blood.

A vision. A bad memory. That was all it was. A harmless by-product of interaction with the over abundance of Mako filling this chamber. Nothing more.

_Right?_

Right. Cloud struggled backup onto his feet, with Tifa helping him stand, a steadying hand on his arm.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and he managed a nod. He started to say something about the vision, but, remembering where he was and what they were doing, Cloud knew that he neither had the time nor the need to mention any of it. If he had to say anything, he would have to save it for when they weren't stuck in the heart of a Shinra Mako Reactor. Besides, they'd both lived through the incident; no reason to dredge up bad memories.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied, nodding. "Overexposure to Mako or something. I'll be alright." He took a step forward, past her, and palmed the bomb. "Let's get this over with."

Tifa didn't immediately respond, and the response on the tip of her tongue - _SOLDIERs shouldn't be harmed by Mako exposure -_ was left unsaid as Cloud moved toward the vent shaft. A careful analysis of the structure of the shaft showed that this one seemed to not have any alarm attached to its hatch, which allowed Cloud to arm and deposit the bomb with minimal fuss.

The explosive prepared and the reactor ready to blow, Cloud and Tifa quickly evacuated the lower floors and hurried back up to the upper level where Barret was guarding the door. The trio rushed out of the storage chamber and hurried to the elevator that ran up tot he offices and control area and the bridges beyond that would lead to freedom.

The long industrial corridors were silent and inert, beyond the echoes of their footfalls as the trio hurried through the passages. They glanced down side corridors, to find the offices that they led into were empty. no guards were posted, no automated defenses were ready, and no trained guard beasts were lurking the hallways. The reactor was empty.

"You remember that bad feeling?" Tifa muttered as they moved down the main corridor and stepped out into the open air of Midgar's upper plate.

"Beginnin' to feel the same way," Barret responded. They moved across the long T-shaped bridge, Sector Five's sums stretching away beneath the narrow passage, and turned toward the entrance to the tunnels leading below the plate.

Cloud's boots screeched to a halt, as did the other two rebels right behind him, and everyone raised weapons or Materia.

Before the doorway leading into the tunnels stood a squad of Shinra soldiers, poised shoulder to shoulder, with the front rank on one knee, a dozen men lined across the bridge with rifles leveled at the rebels. Behind them were dozens more, lining the tunnel and ready to stop AVALANCHE dead in their tracks.

"The hell?" Barret growled, and he stood tensed, heavy gatling cannon ready to mow through the Shinra soldiers where they stood, knowing the 20mm shells would rip through the enemy in such a confined space. If they had chosen to ambush the trio of rebels, then Shinra must not have any idea what they were up against with choosing such an exposed formation.

Of course, just as the Shinra soldiers were crammed into a relatively narrow space, so too were the rebels, and it would be easy for the enemy to gun them down as well.

Several moments passed as the two groups stared at each other, the three rebels glaring into the impassive visors of the ready Shinra soldiers. Barret's right arm trembled slightly in anticipation, and Tifa's muscles tensed as she prepared to move. The Shinra soldiers' rifles were held steady in their hands, though faint movements - one man nodding his head slightly, another licking his lips - showed they too were tensed and ready to move. The only man who didn't make a motion was Cloud, his glowing, harsh gaze spearing the enemy, as if trying to drive them off from the mere intensity of his gaze alone.

The clacking of footsteps on the concrete behind them cut through the thick, tense air, and as one, the Shinra soldiers lowered their weapons slightly, rising and saluting. The rebels, confused at the sudden change in their enemies' stance, lowered their arms and looked behind themselves, to see what had caused the sudden reaction among the soldiers arrayed before them.

Walking behind them, with no escort or weapons, was the smiling, heavy-set form of Alexander Louis Shinra, President of the Shinra Power Company. He strode toward the rebels, clad in a blood-red business suit, a cigar clenched between his teeth as he regarded the members of AVALANCHE that he had so easily trapped.

"The hell?" Barret demanded, so surprised that he didn't think to raise his weapon and finish Shinra then and there.

"You," remarked Shinra as he observed the trio. "You three are . . . what was it? That annoying band of pathetic pests? Named after some disastrous geological phenomena in a petty attempt to sound dangerous?"

"That's _AVALANCHE _mothafucker!" Barret snarled, and this time remembered to raise his gun-arm, leveling the six 20mm barrels at Shinra's vulnerable form. Behind the trio of rebels, the Shinra soldiers raised their rifles and readied to fire again.

"My apologies," Shinra stated calmly, as if Barret was pointing a microphone at him, not a heavy cybernetic gatling cannon. He shrugged helplessly. "I can't be expected to know the name of every little knot of pretentious, self-righteous fools who crawl out of the muck and hope to scratch at my position in this world." As Shinra spoke, he looked over the trio, and stopped as his eyes fell upon Cloud. The mercenary, noting the president's interest, shouldered his way past Barret and stood before Shinra, arms crossed over his chest.

"That's right," Cloud stated calmly, and for the first time, Shinra's eyes widened in surprise.

"You're him, then?" Shinra asked. "The traitor? I heard you had been executed out on the hills outside of Midgar like the animal you are." Shinra took the cigar out of his mouth and tapped it, flicking off the ashes on the end. He looked back up and regarded Cloud for a moment, noting the lack of response on the mercenary's features at the insult.

"Tell me, traitor," he asked. "What was your name?"

"Strife," Cloud answered. "Cloud Strife. SOLDIER. First Class."

"A SOLDIER commander?" Shinra mused, nodding. "That explains why these fools have had managed such small success against my corporation. Without a SOLDIER leading them, they would have been stamped out like so many other petty criminals." He shook his head. "Unfortunately, you are not another Sephiroth. If you had been of his caliber, you might have done some damage . . . as well as allowed me to easily remember your name."

"Criminals?" Barret snarled, ignoring the last part of Shinra's speech. his weapon began trembling in rage. "What about you? What about Shinra? What about all the life you keep sucking out of the planet? You people are fuckin' _murderers!_ And you're the worst of 'em all!"

Shinra managed a tired sigh and puffed his cigar, and then shrugged.

"You are boring me with your half-articulate prattling," he explained. "I have a dinner I must prepare for."

As if on cue - which it probably was - the air was split by the sound of rotors. Air started whipping past the trio of rebels, and Barret raised his arm to shield his face, as did Tifa. Cloud stood by impassively, the fierce winds blasting his blonde hair about wildly, as a helicopter descended from above toward the President. It hovered alongside the bridge, a special platform mounted on the side reaching out to greet him. He casually stepped on board, and the helicopter started rising up into the air.

"Son of a-" Barret shouted, raising his gun-arm. Even as he did so, over the roar of the rotors, they could hear a dull _clang_ as the Shinra soldiers behind them shut the heavy door beyond and started to seal it.

"What are-" Tifa began, but Cloud cut her off.

"They're going to lock us in here so we get killed when the reactor explodes!"

"Then we gotta keep th' door from lockin'!" Barret thunders, and wheeled on the rapidly-closing door. His heavy gatling cannon began to spin, and thundered a stream of bullets toward the doorway. The heavy rounds slammed into the metal portal, bouncing off, but digging deep furrows into the solid steel.

The President's helicopter started to move away, but the sound of rotors did not fade. Instead, they seemed to grow even more intense. As Barret continued firing, his furious curses buried beneath the massive roar of his weapon, Cloud looked up. What he saw made his eyes widen and left hand rise, the Materia on his arm flaring.

"Incoming!" he shouted, and Barret and Tifa dove aside, as did the mercenary, even as his gauntlet released a bolt of lightning into the sky.

Something slammed into the bridge between them, and fire an sound filled hte trio's senses, followed by a dull ringing in their ears as the helicopter rotors drew closer.

"Attack choppers!" Cloud shouted, and Barret whirled, raising his gun-arm to the sky. With a thunderous roar of fury, he started firing wildly into the air, brass casings raining down onto the bridge. he spotted a pair of glowing lights hovering in the air a couple hundred feet above them, and continued firing.

Meanwhile, Cloud saw that the missile shot by the helicopters above had ruined large portion of the bridge. A gap of over fifteen feet separated the mercenary from Barret and Tifa, and as he watched, Tifa ran toward the edge.

"Cloud, you have to jump!" she called, and he nodded. he ran toward the gap, knowing his superior SOLDIER training and Mako infusions would give him the strength he would need to clear the gap.

As Cloud rushed toward the gap, preparing to leap, Barret let out a furious cheer, and the sound of the rotors above began to change, as one of the choppers spiraled out of control. The helicopter dropped toward the Mako Reactor, Barret's bullets tearing through the engine and rotors, and crashed into the solid white cliff face that was the Reactor's outer wall. Flames erupted form it as it toppled through the air and plummeted toward the slums below.

Barret's cheer turned into a curse as the remaining helicopter loosed all of its missiles at once, a dozen streaks rocketing toward the trio below. The rebel leader scythed his gun arm across the sky, his bullets slamming into the missiles and shattering them, detonating explosives and fuel. The bullets tore through the projectiles, the explosions destroying and consuming many others. Barret's fire blasted and tore the missiles, all the while he cursed and shouted and fired, brass casings ringing across the bridge.

Cloud leapt, and Tifa reached out for him.

Barret fired and cursed violently.

Cloud's fingers touched Tifa's, and she leaned forward to pull him in.

Barret fired and shouted a challenge.

Cloud's grip strengthened, and Tifa started to pull him in.

Barret fired, and then thundered a denial at what he saw at the last instant.

One missile survived.

It slammed into the bridge behind where Cloud had leapt, and the shockwave and fire buffeted him. His body shielded Tifa from the blast, shrapnel stabbing into his entire backside, fire igniting his skin and the back of his shirt, and the explosion sent him flying forward. Tifa tried to hold on, but the mercenary was torn from her grip and launched off the bridge, up and over Barret, even as the rebel leader watched in horror.

Cloud fell past the bridge, and plummeted into the deep, endless night of Midgar's slums.

* * *

-

* * *

Yes, I cut out the Air Buster battle. I was considering including it, and I ran a whle lot of scenarios through my head involving its use, but one of them seemed to fit. Either the Buster would totally destroy the heroes or they would totally destroy it in a couple of seconds, considering the terrain they were using. Not to mention that the idea of Cloud falling from hanging on to a structural support seemed kind of stupid (the Cloud in this story is strong enough to easily pull himself back up) Overall, the Air Buster fight just didn't work, so I cut it out. Besides, it wasn't a huge boss battle anyway, and it didn't matter in the long run.


	5. Aeris

_**Chapter 4: Aeris**_

_**You alright? Can you hear me?**_

_. . . Yeah . . . ._

_**Back then . . . I only had skinned knees.**_

_What do you mean by "back then"? I've got more than skinned knees now . . . back hurts like hell._

_**What about now? Can you get up?**_

_Hey, I asked you a question. What do you mean, "back then"?_

_**Don't worry about me. Can you stand up?**_

_Maybe. If you'd answer the fucking question I'd consider it._

_**Just worry about yourself for now, okay?**_

_The hell? What are you . . . ._

_

* * *

_

" . . . talking about?" Painful white light strobed down into his eyes as Cloud tried to open them.

"Are you okay?" came a voice, drifting down through the clear air.A beautiful, melodic voice, soft and velvety.

_No_, he was not okay. Aches and sore muscles stretched across his body, as if he had been taking a nap on the freeway during rush hour. He started to try to move his body, taking an internal catalogue of what was broken and what wasn't. Thankfully, it seemed his Mako regeneration was working; he hurt like hell, but his body was miraculously intact.

"Maybe," he answered dryly, trying to sit up. Slender, delicate fingers looped under Cloud's left shoulder and helped raise him up to a sitting position, his head swimming as he moved into a new position. The white light began to dim as his eyes adjusted, and he looked up at the woman who was helping him.

Cloud blinked, momentarily thinking he was dead; no normal human woman would be this beautiful. It took his mind a second to catch up and place the delicate features and bright green eyes he was staring at, but he quickly enough recognized the flower vendor he had helped the previous night.

"What happened?" he managed to say. "Where am I?"

"A church in the Sector Five slums," she explained, and Cloud nodded. "You came crashing down through the roof. I think you broke a beam or two coming down. The rooftop must have broken your fall, and the flowers cushioned against the impact. But I'm still amazed you lived through that."

"Flowers?" Cloud asked, and he then realized that he was in fact laying in a wide bed of vibrant multi-colored flowers. He glanced around the room, and saw that he was indeed in a church, an old, run down wooden building with a dozen old wooden pews, golden-white light streaming through huge windows and filtering through stained glass. He looked down at the flowers again, and noted how healthy and think they were. Weird; flowers didn't grow in Midgar. _Nothing_ grew in Midgar.

"Sorry about the mess," Cloud offered, stretching out his injured muscles as the flower girl stood up and walked around in front of him, smiling. She shook her head, as if to wave off his apology.

"Don't worry," she replied. "The flowers here are very resilient because this church is a sacred place. The altar would have sat where the flowers are growing right now." She looked around the room, her brown hair bouncing as she did so. Cloud noted how it seemed to reflect the sunlight, shimmering in the vibrant air.

"They say you can't grow flowers and grass in Midgar, but I guess this proves them wrong," she said with a smile, kneeling down in the flower patch and checking her plants. "For some reason, flowers have no trouble growing here." Cloud nodded, and glanced down at his materia bracer. Focusing, he called up the energies of his restorative materia, and green light played over him, and some of the pain ebbed away.

_Pain is just weakness leaving the body,_ he recited the old SOLDIER mantra as he shakily stood up.

"Hey, do you remember me? From yesterday?" she asked suddenly, and Cloud nodded.

"Yeah, you were selling flowers up on the plate," the mercenary replied. "You really need to know how to defend yourself, by the way."

"That's not very nice," she responded, planting her hands on her slender hips and pouting. "I _can_ take care of myself. But thanks for the help yesterday, anyway."

"No problem," Cloud replied, waving her thanks away.

"I just didn't have my weapon or materia on me," she explained, shrugging. "Didn't think I would need it up on the plate."

"You have materia?" Cloud asked, and she nodded. She held up the bracelet on her left wrist, which glowed with several small pinpricks of light.

"I also have another one, but it doesn't do anything," she added with a slight chuckle.

"You probably just don't know how to use it," Cloud suggested. There were odd materia that worked differently from normal magic materia, after all, but he had never seen or handled any.

"No, it's not that," she explained, and reached up to the pink ribbon that secured her braid in place. There, Cloud saw a very pale light hidden among the pink fabric. "I know how to use most materia. But this one is special; it belonged to my mother. It doesn't do anything, but I feel safe just having it." She paused, and cocked her head to the side, a surprised expression appearing on her face.

"Say, I don't know your name, do I?" She extended a hand to Cloud. "Aeris Gainsborough." He shook her delicate fingers with his own think, gloved hand.

"Cloud Strife," he replied. She nodded, smiling again, and looked him over once more.

"I'm guessing that giant sword on your back isn't just for show, right?" she asked, and he nodded. "What are you? Mercenary?"

"You could say that," Cloud replied with a shrug. "I do a little bit of everything; fighting, scouting, protection, whatever. I am . . . or rather, I was, on a job when I came crashing through your rooftop."

"A jack of all trades?" Aeris asked, and her expression shifted to one of curiosity. "Hm. You know, now that you mention it . . . ."

"What?" Cloud asked. He managed a slight grin as he guessed what Aeris was wanting. "You have a job for me?"

"Maybe," she replied. "A big, tough guy like you could help me out. I'm in the market for a bodyguard."

"Pretty girl like you, down here in the slums, I can understand that," Cloud remarked, and Aeris managed a light, pleasant laugh.

"Are you trying to sweep me off my feet?" she joked, and Cloud smirked.

"No, just making a statement," he replied. "But it'll cost you. I'm not free, you know."

"Hmmm . . . ." she mused, scratching her delicate chin, considering what she could use to compensate him for his services. Her face lit up, and she smiled again.

"How about a date?" she asked, and Cloud actually managed a chuckle. After a second, he realized that she may be serious about it, and he thought for a moment.

"Interesting method of payment," he remarked. He then nodded. "Sure, why not?" Aeris' smile grew wider.

"Thank you!" she answered.

The tall double-doors at the entrance of the church suddenly opened, and both mercenary and flower girl turned toward the sound, in time to see a pair of figures walk into the hushed stillness of the church. Cloud narrowed his eyes as he recognized the uniforms the two men wore.

Both men wore a uniform consisting of a blue suit jacket and pants, with black shoes and a white button-up shirt underneath. However, their approaches to their respective uniforms varied. The one on the left wore his suit jacket open and his white shirt untucked, and moved with a remarkable slackness and laziness in his slender body. Blood red hair topped his thin face, brushed back into rough spikes and a long, thin ponytail running down his back. A pair of goggles sat upon his head, resting just above his eyes and holding back his hair. Cloud recognized the model of goggles instantly; while they looked ordinary enough, they were actually a very sophisticated design that could project data onto the lenses, and included small but powerful night vision and thermal lenses, almost invisible. It was a design restricted to Shinra special forces.

The slender man's companion, however, seemed far more serious and in control. His head was shaved bald, revealing his skin, several shades darker than his comrade's. A slight, closely trimmed goatee and mustache marked his face, and a pair of black sunglasses shaded his eyes . . . black sunglasses that featured the same nearly invisible thermal and night vision lenses along the frame. His suit was neat and impeccable, jacket closed, shirt tucked in. He walked with a powerful presence, his steps fluid and controlled, clearly a master of martial arts.

Their uniforms, their stances, and the half-dozen blue-armored Shinra soldiers walking behind the pair told Cloud all he needed to know, and, barely cognizant of the fact, he had stepped forward, interposing himself between Aeris and the intruders. His right hand rose and grasped his sword, ready to draw it from its sheath at the slightest threatening motion from the pair of suited men.

"Hm." The sound echoed across the room as the red-haired man regarded the mercenary, and he glanced to his partner, all the while keeping Cloud visible in the corner of his eyes. "Rude, what do you think?"

"The eyes, man," replied the bald man, in a quiet, but powerful tone. "That's the guy, alright."

"Thought he was supposed to be killed when the reactor blew," the red-haired man muttered, and then shrugged. "But, whatever."

Cloud narrowed his eyes. He didn't know these men, but those uniforms . . . something about them . . . .

_I know them._

He did. That was right; those uniforms, the blue suits and trousers - they belonged to Shinra's elite branch of assassins and spies, the Turks. And these two men had come in here, clearly looking for him, it seemed.

"Shinra," Cloud said, tightening the grip on his sword. The two Turks glanced at each other again.

"Reno, want to take him out? He's not part of the objective," Rude asked, and the red-head shrugged again.

"The boss said he's dead, killed when the reactor blew. We'll just correct a bureaucratic oversight while we pick up our girl." Reno reached into his open coat and pulled out a short, foot-long metal rod. He casually flicked it, and it extended another two feet, the tip sparking with electrical charge. Cloud narrowed his eyes at the weapon. The device, called a shock-rod, was one of the Turks' signature weapons, a versatile piece of nasty technology. Reno met Cloud's gaze, and he chuckled.

"Of course, we _could_ conveniently forget we ever saw you," he explained. "We're not here to tangle with some ex-SOLDIER mercenary. We're her for her." He pointed over Cloud's shoulder, at Aeris. "Tell you what. You walk out of here, right now, and forget you ever saw us, and we'll forget we ever saw you. Official word will be that everyone died when the reactor blew. Of course, that's not the truth, but it doesn't matter when Shinra controls the media. The people don't need to know that it was a complete failure."

"The others escaped?" Cloud asked, and Rude shrugged.

"Not like it matters," he explained. "AVALANCHE is just a petty annoyance, really. Shinra's just using you guys as a media focus to build up popular support."

"And you guys are completely fine with telling me this," Cloud muttered, and Reno chuckled.

"Like Rude said, you guys don't matter." He gestured with his rod. "Now, step aside, or we'll have to_ make_ you matter."

Cloud glanced back and forth between the two Shinra spies, and then back toward Aeris. She still stood behind him, but as he watched, she took a step back toward one of the boxes at the edge of the flower patch, and grabbed a rod off of it, much like Reno's, though longer and more narrow. She looked to Cloud, concern and a bit of fear tracing across her features. He sent her a reassuring smile, and turned back toward the Turks.

"Sorry, assholes, looks like I'll have to pass." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at Aeris. "I'm her bodyguard, so you want her, you'll have to get through me."

Reno sighed, and Rude calmly popped his knuckles.

"If that's the case," Reno said, shaking his head. "Looks like we'll have some proof AVALANCHE was wiped out after all."

"Not in here!" Aeris suddenly whispered, and Cloud glanced back at her. "The flowers will be ruined!" Cloud blinked in disbelief, but from her tone, she was dead serious; she must _really_ like these flowers. Fine then.

Cloud's bracer suddenly flared, and a bolt of lightning shot toward the Turks. Reacting instantly, the pair of Shinra spies split apart, diving aside. The bolt of electricity lanced between them and threw one of the Shinra soldiers behind them off his feet, sending him slamming into his comrades behind him. The Turks were up in an instant, but even as they rose, Cloud and Aeris were retreating, fleeing out a door in the back of the room toward the rear of the church.

"Well, shit," Reno muttered, and he glanced at Rude. Without waiting another second, the two Turks bolted after the fleeing pair, and most of the Shinra troops followed, a pair pausing to assist their fallen comrade.

* * *

Cloud and Aeris rushed into the rear chamber of the church, and he came to a halt as he saw what the back end of the structure looked like.

"Since when has a giant intercontinental ballistic missile been sticking out of the ground?" he asked, and Aeris shrugged.

Apparently, somewhere along the line, an ICBM had crashed through the roof of the church, and had blown out the second and first floors. A massive hole was visible in the ceiling above, and most of the second level of the church had been destroyed, leaving only a narrow walkway directly overhead, connected to a staircase jutting out on an intact portion of the first floor, just beyond the two story high missile. The missile itself leaned against the wall directly ahead of their position, the rocket end pointing toward the roof above and the pointed end dug into the ground. Cloud had no clue as to how or why the missile was there; all he knew was that it had destroyed most of this part of the church. Aside from the narrow walkway they stood on, the stairs, and another narrow walkway that reached from the top of the stairs toward the attic up above, the rest of the floors had been annihilated.

The way behind them featured a pair of pursuing Turks and a squad of Shinra soldiers, and they only had one way forward, so Cloud took it. He grabbed onto Aeris' hand and ran toward the stairway. In a single deft motion, he had scooped Aeris up into his arms and leapt across the gap, landing solidly on the dangling staircase.

A pulsating whine filled the chamber, and Cloud staggered forward, searing pain shooting up his back. He spun, drawing his sword off his back, and saw Reno standing at the entrance to the chamber, smoke rising from the tip of his rod, and readying for another shot. Rude pushed past his partner, and Reno let fly again, firing a bolt of energy from his weapon. Cloud hopped back a step and spun aside, and the beam crashed into the staircase beneath him, sending wood chunks flying everywhere.

"Aeris, run!" Cloud shouted, and she started up the steps. He quickly followed her, even as Rude leapt across the gap between the stairs and the lower pathway. Cloud channeled a shard of ice from his materia and gestured toward Rude from the top of the stairs. The ice lanced down at the Turk, who snapped up his left leg in an arcing kick that shattered the shard, frozen fragments scattering across the room.

_Ki focus, just like Tifa. Shit._

Regarding Rude with a newfound respect, Cloud brandished his heavy blade. Rude advanced up the steps toward Cloud, and then stopped suddenly. Cloud blinked, and then ducked as he saw Reno let fly with another energy bolt as more Shinra soldiers leapt across the gap between the stairs and the pathway. Cloud looked up quickly to check on Aeris, and saw that she was climbing the stairs leading up to the attic.

"No time to play with you guys," Cloud muttered, and he raised his sword with both hands, then chopped down hard. The blade smashed into the staircase and sent cracks running through the wood. Rude leapt up over the collapsing staircase as it splintered and broke apart, and toward Cloud, leading with a wide kick. Cloud snapped up his left hand, Rude's foot bouncing off his bracer, and the Turk landed beside the mercenary, leading with a vicious right cross that smacked Cloud hard across the chin and spun him around. Cloud rotated with the impact, whirling about and slashing across with his blade. Rude dropped low, and the sword slammed into the wall, shattering wood and sending splinters flying past the pair.

Far below, the Shinra soldiers toppled into the basement of the church amid the storm of falling wood from the collapsing staircase. Reno looked down at them, and then to his partner, and sighed, before raising his rod again. He tapped the side of his goggles with his left hand absently, activating the earphone both he and Rude carried.

"Get back, Rude. Let me plug him, and then you can finish him." Rude grunted in reply.

Aeris, meanwhile, watched the drama unfold below, and was uncertain what to do. She could handle herself in a fight, but these Turks were far better than her in close quarters combat, and she couldn't get a good shot at Rude with the materia she was carrying, and didn't want to risk trading fire with Reno. She looked around the attic, trying to find something she could use, and then her eyes fell on one of several old barrels that had been left up in the attic years previously. One of them was sitting next to a broken gap in the attic floor that was directly over Reno's position.

Perfect.

Below, Rude hopped back a step as Cloud extracted his sword with a flex of his muscles, further cracking the wooden walls of the church. The mercenary readied his sword, and Reno lined him up in his sights.

Then eighty pounds of large wooden barrel smashed into the Turk, shattering on contact with his head and knocking him off his feet. Rude and Cloud glanced at the sound of the impact, and then back to each other. Cloud rushed ahead with an overhead cleave, and Rude skittered to the side as the sword shattered part of the wooden walkway. Cloud whirled, his sword chopping in a wide horizontal arc, and Rude had to duck beneath the blow, and then shot up in a rising kick that rocked Cloud's chin and launched him back hard against the wall. Cloud sent a one-handed slash out before him to drive Rude back and kicked off the wall, charging headlong at the Turk Rude met the charge with two rapid jabs and an uppercut, and then spun around into a powerful roundhouse kick at Cloud's head as he fell back from the blow. The mercenary leaned back as the strike fell, and Rude's foot missed him by a hairsbreadth.

A half-second later, Cloud barreled forward and rammed Rude head-on with his shoulder, all of his Mako-enhanced strength lifting the Turk up and tossing him off the walkway, to plummet into the pit below and smash into an unlucky Shinra soldier as the man stood up.

Reno was still recovering from the barrel to the head, and with Rude and the remaining Shinra soldiers momentarily incapacitated, Cloud hurried up to the attic, to find a waiting Aeris.

"Let's get out of here before they recover," he advised her, and she nodded. She led him toward the hole he had shattered in the roof of the church when he had come crashing down, and they quickly climbed out of the building and into the (relatively) open air of the slums. Not stopping, Cloud ran to the edge of the building's rooftop, and spotted a trash mound, one of dozens of the artificial hills stretching across Sector Five's slums, and the pair dropped off the roof and onto the mound.

"We'll stay on these until we get out of sight of the church," Cloud told her, and she nodded. The pair hurried across the tops of the trash mounds, with Cloud scooping up Aeris and leaping from one mound to the next. After a few moments, they had passed out of sight of the worn-down church and were safe from the prying eyes of the searching Turks. They paused atop one of the garbage mounds, formed of broken concrete structures and metal parts, and Cloud found a stable spot where they could sit down and rest for a moment. Aeris settled down, panting slightly at the exertion of having moved so much and so far over such a short time.

"You okay?" Cloud asked, and she nodded, putting her hands on her knees - and incidentally giving Cloud an unintentional glimpse down her dress. He glanced away before she'd realized, and thought to quickly redirect her attention.

"Why were the Turks after you?" he asked, and she looked up at him, straightening.

"Is that what they're called?' she asked.

"Shinra secret special forces," Cloud explained. "They handle dirty work, such as spying, black bag ops, assassination, kidnapping, and so on." He glanced back to her. "But why would they be after you?"

"No idea," Aeris replied immediately, and Cloud could tell instantly from her tone that she was lying. Still, he found it hard to press the point when looking at her innocent smile, so he dropped the matter.

"So," she added as he looked out over the fields of refuse. "You knew who those guys were. I guess that means you're in SOLDIER?" He looked back toward her, surprise etching across his features.

"That's a little too good for a guess," he remarked.

"Well, your eyes do glow, too," she added with a chuckle. "Hard to miss that. It's a pretty clear sign that you've been infused with Mako, so I caught on a soon as you opened them. That's part of why I figured you would be a good bodyguard." Cloud nodded, but then a thought occurred to him.

"How did you know that glowing eyes marked members of SOLDIER?" After all, in combat most members of SOLDIER wore shielded helmets that covered their eyes, and usually wore contacts over their eyes when out of uniform to cover up and hide their presence. Not very many people knew how to spot members of SOLDIER.

"Oh, nothing," she quickly answered, and looked away for a moment, but the smile never left her face. Cloud raised an eyebrow at her denial.

"Nothing?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she replied, looking back to him and nodding. The mercenary considered arguing with her, but her face simply denied any more pressing questions, so he relented. He watched her look out over the slum, and then point toward on of the shanty towns, about a quarter of a mile away.

"My house is over that way," she remarked, pointing toward a sizable town that was located close to the wall connecting Sectors Five and Six. The structures, even from this distance, looked a little bit better off than those normally seen in Midgar's slums, but when considering the homes, it was like comparing completely rotten fruit to not-quite-completely rotten fruit.

"We should be safe now," Cloud replied with a nod. He edged toward the end of the mound, and reached over toward Aeris, beckoning her. She stepped over, and he scooped her up in his arms and jumped off the edge of the mound. His boots hit the gray-brown, cracked dirt with a dull _thud,_ and he let her down quickly.

"So, which way?" he asked her as she stood, and looked around, gathering her bearings. She nodded in a particular direction.

"This way." She turned and lead the way through the slum hills, and Cloud followed behind her, though trying his best not to get distracted by her imminently watchable backside, and failing miserably.

* * *

Several hours had passed between the destruction of the Mako reactor and Cloud's subsequent plunge into the depths of Sector Five's slums, and the wearied members of AVALANCHE had finally stumbled back into Sector Seven's slums. Tifa, still in a daze about what had happened to Cloud after the missile strike, was gently guided into the safe haven of the Seventh Heaven, and she sat down numbly at the bar. Barret glanced to the rest of his team, who were hard hit by the news of Cloud's fall, but were not taking it as badly as Tifa. He nodded to them, and the trio of rebels quietly dispersed, Biggs and Wedge heading back outside while Jessie descended into the underground bunker. 

"Tifa, you need t' pull yourself together," he muttered, putting a meaty hand on her shoulder. "We still got work to do, and its gonna be ten times as hard with you mopin' around like this." She slowly looked up to him, and watched him reach across and cock back the action on his gun-arm. "And don't worry. We'll make th' fuckin' Shinra jackasses pay."

She slowly nodded, but still seemed numbed and dazed by what had happened. Barret was about to say something more comforting, when the door leading into the bar eased open, and Wedge poked his head inside.

"Yo, Barret," he called. "Eyes on."

Both Tifa and Barret were jolted by the two words, a code-phrase signifying that they were being watched. They glanced to each other with sudden worry, Tifa's shock gone, and then back to Wedge.

"Biggs is keeping an eye on the spotter," Wedge continued quietly. "South side of the town, watching us like a hawk."

"What's he look like?' Barret growled.

"Street punk, form the looks of it," Wedge replied. "No way he's Shinra; looks too dirty and too stupid, even for one of their goons."

Barret and Tifa glanced at one another again, and with a quick nod, they moved toward the doors, the needs of the moment outweighing the loss of Cloud. The two rebels exited the front of the building and looked around. They spotted Biggs as he leaned against a shanty house, and followed his eyes across the filth of the slums, to spot the filth of a spy lurking in the shadows of one of the homes on the edge of town.

Barret looked to Biggs and slapped his gun-arm into a palm, and Biggs nodded at the signal, quietly detaching from the wall and circling around the house he was leaning against. Wedge nodded, as if he had been given and order by Barret, and the burly rebel leader walked down the front of the bar's steps. He looked around the slums, and nodded as he saw what he needed.

"Tifa, get some whiskey and rum," he grunted. She looked at him, confused, and Barret grinned sadistically. "Highest proof we got. We need a fire, hot as it gets." He glanced at the trashcan he had spotted, and moved off toward it.

The spy was as stupid as he was obvious, and never heard Biggs sneak up on him, which made it easy for the rebel to club him in the back of the head with his rifle. Wedge arrived in time to help his partner drag the unconscious street punk, clad in the dirty clothes of most low-level street trash gangs. They hauled the unconscious thug toward the edge of town, where Barret was waiting, as he and Tifa poured a couple bottles of high-proof liquor into the metal can, already full of wood, paper, and other flammable trash. Once the trash can fire was ready, Barret slapped the unconscious thug across the face, slowly rousing him into consciousness.

"Mornin' asshole," Barret grunted, and hauled the punk up to his feet. "Biggs, match."

Biggs lit a match on the side of the can, and Barret turned the thug to face the can as the rebel dropped the match inside. The trash can erupted into a bright yellow flash of flame, the heat immediately washing over the goon's face. The man's confused expression instantly shifted to one of fear as Barret hauled him closer to the can.

"Who the fuck sent you to spy on us?" Barret demanded, fleshy hand holding the back of the thug's shirt while his gun-arm pushed his head toward the flames. The man's immediate, stammering response of absolute terror was exactly what Barret wanted to hear.

"Who the fuck sent you to spy on us?" Barret roared again, even loader, and pressed the man's face toward the fire. He gasped as the flames licked his skin, singing his hair, and he gagged as he tried to breath so close to the intense, oxygen-hungry flames. He managed to say something, and Barret hauled him back, snarling.

"Corneo!" the thug answered. "I was sent by . . . Don Corneo in Sector Six!"

"Corneo?" Tifa asked, and Biggs nodded grimly.

"One of the biggest crime bosses in the slums," he replied. "Runs everything from petty theft and pick-pocketing to human smuggling and prostitution. Biggest slime in the city, even worse than Shinra."

"Why's this fat fuck Corneo sendin' you to spy on us?" Barret added, and the man shook his head.

"He just told me to keep an eye on the guy with the gun-arm, and tell me where he was!" answered the thug. "Nothing more, I swear!"

Barret glared at the hapless thug for a moment, reading his expression, and finally nodded.

"Yeah, that's it," he replied. "This piece of shit don't know any more. Guess this's goodbye."

With that, Barret turned and thrust the thug's head all the way into the trash can fire. The man's body spasmed and flailed, and at first the rebels could hear his screams, but as his face was burnt and he suffocated even as the flames cooked his windpipe and lungs, he went silent. Within a few moments, the scum went still, and Barret upended him, dropping his corpse completely into the fire. The acrid stench of burning human skin stung their nostrils, and the members of AVALANCHE glanced back and forth to one another, before silently leaving the fire to take care of the spy's remains.

"Hate havin' to do that shit," Barret muttered under his breath. "Even if its a worthless fuck like that . . . ."

* * *

The only real difference between Aeris' shanty town and the one that AVALANCHE used for their base was that most of the structures were cobbled together from scrap metal, not simply any refuse available, and it was significantly larger, perhaps housing a few hundred people. The majority of the citizenry were just as rough and dirty and poor as the rest of Midgar's slum populace, though they seemed to do a much better job of keeping their town clean; it almost smelled passable in the village. 

With the pretenses of society, naturally, came the dangers of civilization, and Cloud noted several unsavory figures, more dangerous-seeming than typical slum denizens, but while a couple of them send dirty looks Cloud's way - and more base ones Aeris' - none of them troubled the pair as they threaded their way through the town, past a somewhat lively marketplace, which even featured what looked like a weapons shop built out of an old trailer. Neon lights suffused the shanty town, especially around the small market, and a large overhead television screen - built and maintained by Shinra, naturally - was bolted to the wall overlooking the town, displaying corporate-filtered news for the masses.

Neither Aeris nor Cloud slowed to observe any of these elements more closely; they pushed past and through the town, toward the far end of the slum. They passed between two cobbled homes, and then stepped into something that made Cloud blink and wonder what strange drug he was under the influence of.

There was a gap in the plates above; the sunlight streaming down confirmed this, and the entire area beyond was marked with bright yellow sunlight. Reflected that sunlight were vibrant, healthy flowers, a field of them roughly a hundred or so feet wide, marked with thick green grasses and bushes, as well as footpaths running between the flowers and plants, and the entire area was fenced in, sitting beyond a house that was constructed of solid wood and ceramic shingles, looking like any normal average home. A small pool of water - clean, clear water - was visible behind the house, and an irrigation system had been set up to allow the water to flow among the plants; Cloud spotted machinery that was used to divert the water from Midgar's plumbing systems.

"Surprising, isn't it?' Aeris commented as Cloud looked over the flower field. He nodded, looking back to her.

"How do you manage to grow flowers in Midgar?" he asked. He knew that she had said that the church was sacred, but Aeris' home was a fair distance away from that place.

"No idea," she replied. "But for ever since I've lived here, I've had no trouble growing them in the soil. Maybe I just have a special touch." She waved him toward the door. "Come on in."

The interior of Aeris' house was something that surprised Cloud, who had grown accustomed to the squalor and spartan conditions common in the slums. The well-maintained interior of the large home reeked of the same hominess of many of the shanty houses, but it wasn't cobbled together from pieces of refuse and scrap metal, instead constructed of wood and plaster and brick, and all the normal materials that homes in this age should have been built out of. The interior of the home features wallpaper, something Cloud hadn't seen in what felt like years, and the carpet beneath his boots made the mercenary pause and kick them at the door, to minimize the stain he would bring into this house. He quietly looked himself over, and frowned at how dirty he was compared to the clean interior of this house. While it wasn't particularly opulent or exquisitely appointed, the home was certainly a cut above what one normally saw in Midgar's slums, and it seemed almost like a mansion compared to the normal homes in the area.

"Surprising, isn't it?" Aeris asked, and Cloud nodded, grunting a neutral reply. He looked about the house's interior, and stopped as he caught movement coming out of the kitchen. His initial response was to reach for his weapon, but he relaxed when he saw the figure walking into the main living room was, in fact, a middle-aged brown-haired woman, and not a Turk or Shinra soldier. He quickly surmised that she was Aeris' mother.

"Aeris?" she called, smiling warmly as she saw her daughter. "You're back early . . . ." She trailed off as she saw Cloud, standing in the doorway, hand on his weapon and looking like he'd just fought to one end of hell and back.

"Mom, this is Cloud," Aeris quickly said, and he nodded to her mother. "He's my bodyguard for today."

"Bodyguard?" Aeris' mother echoed, concern stretching across her features. "You didn't get hurt, did you? Were you chased again?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," Cloud replied evenly, lowering his arm from his weapon. The woman nodded, and gestured for him to enter the room.

"Well, I can't not thank you for protecting my daughter," she answered with a smile. "My name is Elmyra. Elmyra Gainsborough."

"Cloud Strife," the mercenary answered, closing the door behind him. A sudden buzzing came from the kitchen, and Elmyra looked over her shoulder, and sighed.

"That's dinner," she muttered. "Excuse me." She hurried back into the kitchen, and Aeris glanced to Cloud.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked him, a curious tone in her voice. He shrugged, and considered his options. He would have to reunite with Tifa and Barret now that Aeris was safe, but they were all the way in Sector Seven, and he was still in Sector Five.

"I need to head for Sector Seven," he said after a moment. "I have some friends I need to meet back up with."

"Really?" she asked, sitting don at the table. "Who?" Cloud paused, considering the prudence of mentioning anything regarding AVALANCHE to her. While she wasn't a friend of Shinra's, for whatever reason, he got the distinct vibe that she might not like the idea of him associating with a band of rebels who were, no matter how they cloaked it, a group of vicious, violent, and destructive terrorists.

"People you really don't want to know about," he finished, and that, if anything else, increased her curiosity.

"Oh, really?' she asked, leaning forward. "Are you sure?"

"Very sure," Cloud finished. "They're in Sector Seven, so I need to head over that way."

"The route won't be too safe," she mused, thinking. "You'll have to cut through Sector Six, and the ruins of the old highway project in that area. Its overrun with monsters right now, and with AVALANCHE doing so much damage up above, Shinra's going to have the gates between slums locked down. You might need me to guide you."

"What?" Cloud answered, staring at her. "You? Sorry," he shook his head "I'm not going to put you in danger just to show me the way through some ruins."

"I'm used to danger," she replied with a sneaky, almost roguish smile. "Like I said, I can handle myself just fine, and I know this area a lot better than you do. I make the trip to Wall Market in Sector Six all the time. You won't find a much better guide."

Cloud blinked, and something flashed through his head, remembering something similar a long time ago, another expedition into a rough area with a guide just as confident as Aeris. He closed his eyes and looked away, banishing the memories of what had happened. The past was the past.

"I'll manage," he grunted. Aeris frowned and gave him an indignant snort.

"Like I'll let you just brush me off that easily," she answered. She stood up and looked to the kitchen. "Mom! I'm taking Cloud to Sector Seven! I'll be back later!"

Elmyra hurried back out of the kitchen, wiping her hands, even before Aeris had finished speaking, clearly distressed by what her daughter had just suggested.

"But, Aeris," she began to say, and then looked at her daughter's expression. After a moment, she sighed, shaking her head. "Oh, like I'll change _your_ min once its been made up," she muttered. "Still, you can't go now; Shinra won't permit transit between gates, and the night hours are far too dangerous for you to be moving through the ruins. You should at least wait until morning." Aeris seemed about to argue, but the logic of her mother's words sunk in and she nodded.

"Yeah, you're right," she said, relenting. "I guess that means that you'll have to spend the night, Cloud."

"I don't want to intrude," he began to say, but Elmyra shook her head adamantly.

"We have an extra bedroom," she told him. "And I want to repay you for protecting my daughter like you did. I insist."

Cloud glanced between the two women, and then shrugged, before nodding.

"Might as well, especially after the day I've had," he replied tiredly.

* * *

Night had fallen over Midgar, a jet-black cloak of polluted, neon-lit clouds and a dome of pure shadow descending over the heavens. However, nighttime did little to stop Shinra's constant hustle and bustle, and the interior of the vast Shinra Tower, the central headquarters of the entire Shinra corporate empire, was abuzz with busy workers. 

The uppermost level of the seventy-one stories of the Shinra Tower was dedicated exclusively to Alexander Louis Shinra's vast office. The titanic desk that the corporate leader sat behind dominate done end of the room, and the rest was largely open space and ornate marble pillars, with a vast plate glass window behind the President's desk that allowed him a panoramic view of the sprawling metropolis of Midgar. No other building even approached the Shinra Tower's height, and President Shinra did his best to ensure that didn't change.

Today, the large office featured only a few inhabitants, among them Shinra himself. He sat behind the desk, looking over the reports from the dock city of Junon, which served as the largest port on the Midgar continent, and was Shinra's second largest base of operations. His son, Rufus Shinra, was administrating that city at the moment, and had written this report personally. After finishing the report, Shinra looked up at the quintet of men in the room with him.

On the right stood the blue-suited forms of the trio of Turk agents present: Tachibana Tseng, head of the Turk Special Operations Agency, along with his two principal agents, the red-haired and lackadaisical Reno D'Angelo, and the silent, collected bald form of Rudolph King. The Turks were all well at ease, for they already knew the plan they had been assigned. Reno and Rude, in particular, were cool and collected, despite the fact that they had returned no more than a few hours ago from another failed attempt to capture an extremely high value target.

The fourth man was the portly figure of Ernst Heidegger, resplendent in his green uniform, and was actually smiling beneath his thick beard. The fifth man, however, was not happy at all.

He wore a dark blue business suit, not unlike the Turks' uniform, but much more civilian in design. His black hair was long, but pulled back into a ponytail behind his head as best as it could be. A short, immaculately trimmed black goatee and mustache ringed the lips and chin of his slender face.

ReeveTuetsi was the head of Shinra's Urban Development division, the element that oversaw all aspects of the administration and expansion of Shinra cities, towns, and holdings, and had, many decades ago, supplanted the mayoral offices of Midgar, Junon, and other cities. As it was Reeve's job to observe, oversee, and promote the well-fare and well-being of Shinra cities and its citizens, he was one of the few true "honest" men in Shinra, not actively involved with suppression of those who wouldn't be dominated by Shinra or utilizing Mako technology to drain life force from the planet itself.

"Mr. President, you can't be serious," he protested, but knew, deep down, that he didn't have much hope to dissuade the President from this insane plot of his. It was relatively easy for him to be ignored, being one of the weakest of Shinra's division heads

"Reeve, I understand you reservations," Shinra replied. "But I also understand the danger that AVALANCHE poses to us, even if the citizenry doesn't. They survived the helicopter ambush, and according to Reno and Rude's report, the SOLDIER working with them was able to affect the rescue of the Ancient. Their continued survival is unacceptable."

"There must be easier ways than destroying entire sectors!" Reeve said, shaking his head, his voice desperate. "This can't happen!"

"It already has," Shinra replied coldly. He glanced to Tseng and his agents, brushing Reeve off. The division head wanted to protest, but he found it hard to go up against Shinra, especially when he had just so easily ignored him. Shinra, and everyone else in the room, knew this as well: Reeve was a pushover.

"Status of Sector Seven's plate?" Shinra asked.

"It will take some time to finish preparations," Tseng replied. "It would be very easy if we could just execute it, but as you've requested, we have to cover our tracks and avoid any Shinra involvement."

"Corneo knows what we need him to know, correct?"

"Yes, sir," Tseng answered. "Once AVALANCHE decides that they have to deal with him, they will learn the truth about our plans. Once that happens, they will rush to the site in an instant, and we will spring the trap."

"Heidegger, you have the Turks' assistance ready for when AVALANCHE attempts to stop the operation?"

"Yes sir," Heidegger answered. "I have two companies of infantry, as well as a platoon of airborne strike troops and a squadron of transport helicopters on standby. Once AVALANCHE takes the bait, we'll take them."

"This is insane!" Reeve burst in, stepping forward. "You people are talking about wiping out an entire sector! Think of how many people will be killed, and how much damage will occur to our economy!" If he couldn't hurt them in their consciences, Reeve resolved, he'd hit them where it hurt: the pocketbook.

"Sector Seven is irrelevant," Shinra answered coldly. "Midgar is irrelevant. Tseng, you have the location of the Ancient. The time has come to stop trying to coerce or convince her to join us. Locate her, capture her. Do whatever it takes, and use whatever force is necessary. I want that girl, and I want her one week ago. Understand?"

"Yes sir," Tseng replied with a sharp salute.

"Reno and Rude will handle the operation," Shinra continued. "Heidegger will provide military support. Give the Turks whatever they need to finish their mission, but keep in mind that Shinra must seem to be attempting to stop the rebels, not the other way around."

'Understood, Mr. President!" Heidegger replied.

"But-" Reeve began to say.

"Reeve, you look tired. Take the rest of the day off. Tomorrow too. You should prepare a report detailing the losses we will suffer when Sector seven is destroyed, and how much it may cost to rebuild."

Reeve stood stock still for a moment, and finally nodded.

"Yes, Mr. President. I will."

"Good. This time tomorrow, I expect that AVALANCHE will become nothing more than a statistic, lumped among those in Sector Seven who did not bother to report their presence. That is all. Dismissed."

* * *

-

* * *

You guys may note that I'm taking the liberty of assigning names to characters who may be known by only first or last names. Generally, these reflect names I'd imagine they'd actually have. Reno strikes me as simply having a cool-sounding last name like "D'Angelo". Rude seems to have that simple, basic name thing going on, and "King" at least to me, fits him well. "Tachibana" fits Tseng's apparently Asian name theme, though "Tseng" is more Chinese while 'Tachibana' is clearly Japanese. This is something of a poke at the generic Asian culture usually encountered in RPG's. (also, props to Solid Shark for informing me of Reeve's official last name) 

Also, I know her name is supposed to be "Aerith." I also don't care. I know her as "Aeris." Therefore, she is "Aeris." Not "Aerith." Live with it.


	6. Break In

_**Chapter 5: Break-In**_

Cloud lay back in the thick, comfortable bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms of Aeris' house. While Elmyra had mentioned that it was a guest bedroom, the fact was that their house only had two rooms, and it seemed Aeris' room was next to this one. Cloud appreciated that her mother had offered him her room for the night, but he remembered, after dinner, Elmyra had pulled him aside.

"I know Aeris will go with you to Sector Seven, if need be," she had said quietly the previous evening. "Both you and I know how dangerous Sector Six is. Please . . . Do everyone a favor and leave early, before she wakes up?"

Cloud had agreed to Elmyra's request. He could brave Sector Six by himself and he honestly didn't want to involve Aeris anymore than she already was. So, he had taken a short, restive nap, the kind that all soldiers learned to undergo during training, and awoke early in the morning, well before Aeris would have gotten up. The mercenary rose slowly, blinking away the last lingering bits of sleep, but he paused as he rose, remembering the last time he had slept in a bed quite this comfortable.

"_Look how you've grown. Such a handsome young man. I be the girls never leave you alone now . . . ."_

"_Not really . . . ."_

"_I'm worried about you. There are a lot of temptations in the city. I'd feel a lot better if you settled down with a nice girlfriend."_

"_I'm all right, Mom."_

"_You should have an older girlfriend, one that can take care of you. I think that would be perfect for you, you know."_

"_I'm not interested right now, Mom . . . ."_

Cloud closed his eyes and banished the memory as best he could. He couldn't be thinking about home right now; if he continued down this line of thought, he'd only dredge up worse memories, and that was the last thing he wanted.

It was edging toward the beginning of the day, and Cloud knew that Aeris would be getting up soon. As quietly as he could manage, the mercenary rose and got dressed, pausing only to check the wounds he had suffered the previous day, and saw that they were almost gone, thanks to his regenerative abilities. Once he had donned his bracer, shoulder-guard, boots, and sword, the mercenary quietly edged open the door leading out of the upstairs. Moving slowly, with almost painful delicacy and precision, the mercenary edged out of his room and past the bedroom Elmyra and Aeris were sharing that night. He listened intently for any sign that he had been detected, but the mercenary heard nothing coming from the second bedroom as he moved past.

Without any further hesitation, Cloud slipped past the door, down the stairs, and drifted away into the early-morning slums, unheard and unnoticed.

* * *

"Tifa, you damn well know I don't like this," Barret snarled. The bunker underneath her bar was filled with the pungent scent of grease and gun oil as Barret prepared his chain-gun for battle. 

"We don't have much of a choice," Tifa responded, shaking her head. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared straight at Barret. "We know all about Corneo, and how dangerous he really is. We also know exactly what his weaknesses are."

"Which is the exact damn reason why I'm not lettin' you walk in there by yourself!" Barret countered violently. He slammed a meaty fist down on the ammunition table, shaking half the bunker.

"It's the only way we're going to get him to talk," Tifa replied, trying to calm Barret down. It didn't work.

"No, Tifa, its not," he grunted, standing up. She watched him open the port on the back of his gun, thread the first round of his ammunition belt into the port, and close it. "There is no fuckin' way in hell I'm letting you walk alone into some dirty piece of shit kingpin's house - especially when his whole fuckin' business involves hurtin' women!"

Barret cocked the bolt on his gun-arm and threaded an ammunition belt around his waist.

"There ain't much I hate more than Shinra," he snarled. "But if there is one, it's _pimps._"

"Barret, we won't be able to get any information out of Corneo if you pump him full of twenty millimeter rounds," Tifa said with a sigh, and shook her head as Barret strapped on body armor.

"And if you go in there, you're as likely to get raped as get him to talk," Barret replied. "Tifa, they know who we are and where we are, and if you go in there he'll know exactly who you are. And I'm not thinkin' that any piece of shit criminal like Corneo is watchin' us for a good reason. I'm gonna find out what he knows and why he wants to know more about us."

Barret finished strapping the armor on and thumped his chest loudly. Tifa considered arguing with the huge, angry man, but finally relented. Barret was right, after all, and while she could look after herself, it was a bit too risky going after Corneo alone. She followed him as he approached the pinball machine elevator and the pair rode it up into the bar, where the rest of the rebel group was waiting. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie were seated at the bar, each cradling a drink in their hands, while Marlene was behind the bar, cleaning up.

"Alright, listen up," Barret barked to the rest of his small band of rebels, and they looked up at the roar of his voice, snapping out of the melancholy stupor they had been in after the spy's execution.

"Me an' Tifa are headin' over to Sector Six soon as the patrols have pulled out," Barret continued. "Gonna see about this "Corn" jackass and take care of business. I'm wantin' you all to keep an eye out for any more spies or anything else weird going on while we're out, okay?" Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge nodded immediately.

"We'll have the entire sector watched, boss," Jessie assured Barret. "If anything happens, we'll let you know." Barret nodded, patting the cell phone underneath his vest.

"Papa, what time will you be home?" Marlene asked, and Barret paused, thinking. Finally, he shook his head.

"I dunno, Marlene," he answered, and then gave her a smile. "Not soon enough. Don't worry about me, though, I'll come home sooner or later!" Tifa watched Marlene's happy smile at that promise, and looked to Barret, still amazed by the dichotomy between how he acted around Marlene, and how he acted in combat. Just yesterday she had watched him burn a man alive without so much as flinching, and here he was, smiling and making his daughter smile like any good father. It was almost impossible to imagine they were the same person.

Barret looked away from his daughter, the smile fading, and turned to Tifa.

"Come on, Tifa," he grunted. "Let's go an' shove my little friend up Corneo's ass an' see what comes out the other end." Tifa was about to nod, but then, after a moment, she shook her head.

"Barret, we have to keep this discreet," she said after a moment. "And you going in there gun blazing won't help any. Corneo's men were watching us for a reason-"

"And I wanna know," Barret replied. "So let's go get what we need out of him!"

"Barret, we need to keep this quiet," Tifa repeated, trying to reason with him. "If we go in there and kill all of his men, Shinra will be all over us. How do we know Shinra didn't put Corneo up to this anyway?"

"If he's working with Shinra, then its even more reason to waste him," Barret growled. Tifa adamantly shook her head.

"And if you go? What if Shinra is waiting?"

"Like hell I'd let you go in there by yourself if Shinra's there!" Barret snapped. "Tifa, you ain't talking me outta this. We're goin', and that's-"

Barret's next word came out as a surprisingly high-pitched squeal. Tifa, growing tired of trying to convince the obstinate rebel leader, had opted for a more forceful persuasion, directed between his legs. She winced as he fell onto the floorboards like a meaty statue, clutching his privates with his good arm.

"Barret, you're too stubborn for your own good sometimes," she said quietly, shaking her head, as the rest of AVALANCHE rushed over to their incapacitated leader. She glanced to them as they gathered around the huge man as he rolled on the floor.

"I'll go check it out," she explained. "If it looks like Corneo's a liability, we'll _all _go back and deal with him."

* * *

Sector Five's slums were still awakening that morning when Cloud moved through the village, as unobtrusively as possible. He quickly exited the town and started cutting across the open slum grounds, weaving between fields of debris and refuse as he ran toward the gate between sectors. He soon rounded one last hill of looming garbage, and came into sight of the massive twelve-foot high concrete structure, a long, gray, lifeless wall stretching across the slum, decorated with miles of rampant graffiti. He moved toward the gate, heading toward the switch beside the large sliding metal doors set into the concrete, only active during the daytime hours, but then stopped dead in his tracks as he realized who was standing in front of the doors. 

"Leaving a bit early, aren't you?" Aeris asked him, smiling knowingly. She was clearly waiting for him, and judging by the compact rod she was holding - a collapsible staff, Cloud realized, upon closer inspection - she wasn't here to just send him off. He grunted in vexation, knowing immediately that she would be following him to Sector Five, whether he liked it or not.

"I wasn't going to bring you with me," he answered honestly. "I could have handled myself, you know."

"I know," she answered, nodding. "My mom said for you to go ahead and leave in the morning before I woke up, but I'm coming with you now anyway. No argument, okay?"

Cloud finally shrugged, unable to argue with her.

"Fine then. Let's go, then." He put a hand on his sword and moved toward the gate switch. His hand passed over the glowing sensor, and a metallic screech could be heard inside the door, following by the rumbling hydraulics of the machinery as it pulled metal portal apart, opening the passage to Sector Six. The pair moved beyond the huge gate and stepped into the ruined, broken landscape of the region beyond.

Sector Six could best be described as one of Midgar's greatest failures. It had been an effort to build up the ground level to make the city more prosperous and to better the lives of the slum denizens, but the project had fallen victim to an odd alliance of problems: budget cuts, covert sabotage by Shinra officials who didn't want the poor slum denizens to become stronger and richer, and the creeping problem of mutant infestation due to Mako reactor leaks. Shinra wouldn't spare the military force to keep the monsters at bay, and without the money, the project could never be completed. Workers left their jobs without the proper pay, and many also left out of fear of monster attacks without Shinra's protection.

Thus, Sector Six had been written off as a failure over a decade ago, and in the intervening time, the landscape had become a broken, twisted stretch of asphalt, abandoned construction equipment, and dark holes where the dregs of society made their homes. It wasn't the nicest place; in fact, Sector Six was considered the most dangerous of the eight slum sectors, and for good reason. Most people preferred to ride the trains over the plates or even go all the way around Midgar to avoid the ruined landscape rather than pass through the wreckage and debris.

It took a long while for Cloud and Aeris to cross the landscape. The ex-SOLDIER often scouted ahead, his glowing eyes scanning the terrain ahead with practiced awareness, searching for threats. Twice he had to move quickly, drawing his heavy sword as strange mutant creatures, looking like gray, dog-sized insects with whipping tails and wide, gaping mouths, had attacked. Quick, brutal slashes and the liberal application of his boots had eliminated that threat. Toward the end of their trek, he had been forced to go completely around one segment of the landscape.

"What's wrong?" Aeris had asked as Cloud changed directions.

"Mechanized equipment doesn't normally grow spines or walk around on its own, does it?" he had asked, and Aeris' eyes had widened, but she said no more, understanding how bad the Mako poisoning was out here. While it wasn't so terrible as to transform nonliving machinery into living monsters, it did show a marked tendency to mutate creatures into something that would blend in with their surroundings. People passing through Sector Six avoided the supposedly abandoned equipment for good reason.

It took four hours of negotiating the terrain, Cloud and Aeris climbing up metal beams, crawling through open sewer pipes, and scaling hills of asphalt and metal. Cloud kept an eye on Aeris but found that, despite her light frame, she was keeping up fairly well with him, apparently used to traversing this difficult environment. They had to often double back on their previous route as the path they took dead-ended, and even Aeris' knowledge of the terrain proved sketchy at times. The terrain was a confused mess, but eventually the pair managed to move beyond the broken highway into more flat and sane terrain.

Shortly after leaving the highway, they came into sight of the Sector Seven gate. Just before the gate was a small, abandoned playground, another part of the renovation project gone sour. At least this bit had been completed and managed to survive the tests of time.

"There it is," she remarked, nodding toward the gate beyond the playground. "That should lead into Sector Seven." Cloud nodded, though a strange sense of regret came over him as he turned to Aeris.

"I guess this is goodbye," he said reluctantly, and she nodded. "Will you be okay heading back by yourself?" Aeris smiled knowingly even as he spoke.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "Whatsoever shall I do without a big strong man to protect me?" Cloud blinked at her mock-serious tone, and then managed a chuckle.

"Sorry, I forgot how much longer you've been down here then me," he replied. "How will you be getting back, though?"

"Train, maybe," she replied. "Even though heading up to the plate itself is risky, I'm pretty safe. I have a fake ID, so I'll be fine." She glanced around the playground, and then spotted something, what looked like an ancient slide fashioned after a ridiculously smiling animal face. Her eyes widened in surprise and happiness.

"Oh, I can't believe its still here!" she said, and hurried over toward the slid. Cloud followed her as she circled around behind the structure and climbed up the back, before sitting on top of it.

"I used to play on this thing when I was little," she explained as the mercenary scrambled up the back of the dome-shaped slide and sat down next to her. They were silent for several moments as Aeris peered around the playground from their elevated position, over the desolate slums and ruined landscape. Cloud leaned back and looked up at the plate overhead, seeing the tiny overhead lights of distant maintenance machinery, a strange multicolored starlight display against an ash-gray metal sky. After a moment, he turned his gaze and looked out over the slums, and spotted a brightly lit town a short distance away, beyond a few more trash mounds, the gleaming neon and electrical lights a stark contrast to the grungy and steel-gray and brown garbage. That had to be the Wall Market that Aeris had mentioned earlier.

"What rank were you?" Aeris suddenly asked, and Cloud blinked. It took him a moment to answer.

"In SOLDIER?" he asked rhetorically. He paused, trying to remember, his mind blanking out for an instant as he searched his brain for the memory. Why did he suddenly forget something so important? A moment later, however, the rank popped into his mind, and Cloud tried to suppress the pride rushing through him as he spoke the next words. "First Class. The best of the best."

"First Class?" she echoed wistfully. "I see. Just like him . . . ."

"Just like who?" Cloud asked.

"My first boyfriend," she answered, and Cloud suddenly felt off-balance, as if he was about to drop off the side of the slide, at those words. He managed to catch himself, though, and figured from the way she was looking out over the ruins that she hadn't noticed.

"Were you two . . . serious?" he asked, and she shrugged. Somewhere behind them, they could hear the hydraulics of the gate hissing as they opened, but neither of them paid immediate attention.

"We didn't get very far," she replied, with a wistful smile. "But I really liked him."

"What was his name?" Cloud asked after a moment. "Not very people make into First Class. I probably knew him." She was silent for a moment, and then shook her head.

"It doesn't really matter," she answered. "I haven't seen him for years." Cloud nodded silently as the doors behind them closed once again, and he glanced in that direction. His eyes fell upon someone moving toward the distant market beyond the next trash mound, and his eyes widened.

"Tifa?" he half-whispered, in surprise. He couldn't tell perfectly from this distance, but the slender woman with long brown hair struck a strikingly familiar figure.

"Who?" Aeris asked, looking up in surprise at his sudden words.

"One of my friends," he answered after a moment, standing up. "I think she's headed for Wall Market . . . ."

"That's not good," Aeris said quickly, standing up. "Wall Market isn't a safe place, not with Don Corneo running things . . . ."

"Corneo?" Cloud asked, and she quickly explained the nature of Corneo's dealings in Sector Six as they climbed down the slide and started after the disappearing pair in the distance. Before she was even a third of the way finished, Cloud's face twisted in disgust at the man she was describing, and he began to wonder if they shouldn't pay him a visit and rid the city of his stain.

Tifa had disappeared around another trash mound, and by the time Cloud and Aeris had caught up and rounded the garbage and scrap, she had disappeared into the brightly lit slum town beyond.

"Great," Cloud grunted as they entered the village, rapidly becoming surrounded by hundreds of electrical and neon lights of every shade of imaginable color. There was so much ultraviolet light being given off by the signs and lamps that grass had actually started growing where the people didn't tread as heavily. Vendors could be heard hawking their wares from dozens of tents and stalls, and the streets - which were anywhere between the various buildings and tents that gave enough room to move around - were crowded with people. A few shanty restaurants and diners had been set up, and the customers could be heard within through the thin wood or metal walls. The structures here seemed better made than usual for a slum town, owing to the high degree of prosperity in the area due to the markets. People were everywhere, ranging from the usual ragged slum denizens to the better - or at least more colorfully - dressed vendors and "upper class" of the slums. Cloud though he even sighted off-duty Shinra soldiers and a few people wearing business suits scattered among the sellers and buyers, likely seeking out the illicit goods available in such a place.

All the buildings, people, and confusion made locating anyone very difficult. The pair wandered around the market, searching for the missing pair of rebels, but to no avail. Within twenty minutes after arriving at Wall Market, there was no overt sign of their presence, and Cloud started getting frustrated.

"We'll never find her at this rate," he muttered, and Aeris nodded as they came to a stop outside another shanty diner, this one inside an old trailer. They could hear the bouncer/greeter beside calling for people to come inside.

"Okay, new plan," she replied, thinking for a moment. "Why would she be here? She's probably looking for Corneo, as he does run most of the business around here. If she's looking for him, she'd ask around and try to find him or where he lived, right?"

"You're thinking we should follow her trail?" Cloud replied, and nodded. "Good idea."

"Well, since most of the thugs and bouncers around here probably work for Corneo anyway, I think if we ask them about him, we can find the man himself pretty quickly," Aeris continued. Cloud nodded, and then glanced toward the diner they stood in front of, and the man standing outside of it, waving for people to come in. Without another word, he walked up to the man.

"Hey, man, what's up? You hungry? Good food, just a few gil!" he offered. Cloud shook his head, and then reached into his pocket.

"I need to see Corneo," he explained. "Where is he?"

"Don Corneo?" answered the bouncer. "Only know him by rep, you know what I mean?" Cloud nodded, understanding. Knowledge regarding Corneo's operations was common in the slums, and if the bouncer denied he knew of Corneo, then it would obviously make it look like he was covering for his boss. The man was big, but not stupid.

The mercenary pulled his hand out of his pocket and held up a wad of gil, roughly around five hundred. The bouncer's eyes widened, and he glanced around surreptitiously, before reaching toward the money.

"I dunno, man, its not like everyone around here knows he lives close to the central pillar or anything," the man explained as he took the money.

"How much protection does he have?" Cloud asked, and the bouncer shrugged.

"Not like he's got a small army of personal bodyguards or anything. But everyone knows that." The bouncer pocketed the money. "They've got orders to shoot on sight. I should know, I used to work for him. He's got . . . maybe ten, fifteen guys over there as protection."

"Thanks," Cloud replied, and headed back toward Aeris. She watched him, nodding and smiling approvingly as he came back.

"And here I thought you'd just beat him up and get the information out of him the hard way," she remarked, and he shrugged.

"Money works faster than fists," he replied. "If Tifa is using the same method, she'll be heading for Corneo's mansion or there already. Let's go."

The pair hiked north through the crowds and streets of Wall Market, cutting past the tents and buildings, and finally entered an area with fewer people. The crowds thinned out as piles of random scrap and metal garbage began to loom up on either side of their path. A particularly large mound of metal and machinery was visible next to what looked like a weapons supplier off to their right, and Cloud could swear he saw an open garage door that housed a light Shinra tank, an engineer working over the vehicle to refit it. Idly, he wondered if the engineer worked for Corneo, or was a free supplier.

Cloud dismissed the thoughts as they moved past the mound of cast-off weaponry, and came into sight of what could only be Don Corneo's mansion.

Wall Market consisted of hundreds of vendors and businessmen and dozens and dozens of shops and stalls. There were enough lights in that slum to light up an entire city block, with energy to spare. But Don Corneo's mansion was probably ringed with twice as many lights as _all_ of Wall Market put together. The entire house was a large, two-story structure built in a vaguely Wutaian style, with sweeping architecture and dozens of the slashing, ornate characters of the eastern civilization painted and carved on walls and the main doorway. However, these characters and the architecture seemed gaudy and ostentatious, robbed of their meaning in an effort to make the home look "cool". Carts filled with random paraphernalia littered the grounds before the main doors, seeming like mounds of random objects and souvenirs that Corneo had gathered and had no place to put.

The house itself was a large two-story building, though not a true mansion. Still, the quality of construction and materials were far superior to those of many other houses in the slums, even those others in Wall Market. Solid wood and plaster covered the building, and compared with the usual slum structures, it _was_ a mansion. A single man, wearing a gray suit and with a sub-machinegun slung over his shoulder, stood idly in front of the door. Tifa was nowhere to be found.

Cloud paused, considering the situation, before glancing to Aeris.

"Stay here for a moment," he said quietly. "I'll go check things out." She nodded, and he broke away and walked toward the entrance to the mansion. Aeris watched him move up toward the guard, who did not visibly react at the presence of a large muscular man with a sword nearly as tall as he was. As he started speaking with the man, who answered in a bland, bored tone, however, Aeris heard a faint rustle in the strange grass behind her, and looked over her shoulder. Her large green eyes blinked once in surprise as she found herself face to face with the same woman that she and Cloud had spied earlier. The woman, however, was not paying attention to Aeris, instead looking past her and at the mansion.

"Are you Tifa?" she asked bluntly, and the brown haired woman froze at her words, before looking at Aeris in surprise.

"What?" Tifa paused for a moment, and recognition flicked into her eyes as she recognized who she was speaking to. "Wait a second, I remember you. I think I saw you with Cloud in the park earlier. Right?"

"Yes, that was me," she replied with a nod. Aeris caught something in Tifa's expression and stance as she spoke that, and held up a hand. "Don't worry, we just met. It was nothing."

"Don't worry?" echoed Tifa, surprise etching across her face at the surprising - and subtly embarrassing) remark. "Oh, don't misunderstand. Cloud and I just grew up together. Its not like, you know . . . ." Aeris managed a smile and a nod, and then chuckled lightly.

"Poor Cloud," she remarked, and looked over her shoulder as the mercenary returned from his questioning of the door guard. "Here we are, calling him nothing within earshot." Tifa managed a laugh of her own as the mercenary approached, not seeing her behind the cart. He paused, blinking, as he recognized the sound of her voice, and stepped around the cart quickly, to see the two women giggling.

"Tifa!" he exclaimed, and her face lit up at seeing him again. She took a step toward him, raising her hands, as if to hug him, but then stopped, hesitation striking her for an instant. But it lasted only for a moment, and she continued stepping toward him, instead opting for a rough punch in the chest. The mercenary grunted as he fist smacked into his torso, and he rubbed the spot she had bruised.

"What was that for?"

"For scaring me and making everyone back home think you were dead," she growled, putting her hands on her hips in annoyance. Her features softened a second later, however. "Are you okay? You didn't get hurt, did you?"

"Fifty meter fall," Cloud said with a shrug. "It tickled some."

"Slightly," Aeris added, and Cloud nodded.

"But what are you doing here?" he added. "We thought you were looking for Corneo . . . ."

"I was, but, um," Tifa began, but then glanced at Aeris. She instantly caught the hint, and started to nod, when Cloud held up a hand.

"Don't worry, she's cool. She's no friend of Shinra's. I had to run off some Shinra goons who were after her earlier today." Tifa hesitated, but then nodded, trusting in Cloud's judgment.

"Okay, so when we got back after you fell," she explained. "We found a spy hanging around the bar. Barret squeezed some information out of him the hard way-" she grimaced as she spoke, but didn't explain the particulars of the interrogation "-and he told us Corneo sent him. Barret wanted to kick the door in and take him out in a storm of gunfire, but I wanted to keep a low profile in case he was working with Shinra, so I came here to check things out and see what he was up to." Cloud was nodding as she finished, and was looking back toward the mansion, considering his options.

"Corneo has spies looking after AVALANCHE," he muttered, and then shook his head. "Not good. I'd say we keep quiet and try to sneak in there and see what's happening. But the guard said that Corneo wasn't interested in visitors unless they were women . . . ."

"Maybe we could slip in there," Aeris suggested, glancing to Tifa. "We can question Corneo directly."

"Umm," Tifa began, uncertain about bringing Aeris along, and Cloud understood her hesitance.

"I don't want you two in there without some backup," he began, and Tifa snorted.

"Not that line again," she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. "Barret was saying the same thing about not letting me go in there by myself. I can handle myself, Cloud."

"I understand where he's coming from," Aeris piped in, nodding. "Corneo has a very bad reputation. Its not a good idea to go in there without some backup."

"Can you fight?" Tifa asked, and Aeris nodded immediately. Cloud, however, seemed unconvinced.

"I'd rather go in there with you two," he explained, but Tifa shook her head.

"How would you get inside? Corneo only wants women, after all."

"Maybe we could have him dress up like a girl?" Aeris commented. Tifa blinked, glanced at the heavy-set, muscular mercenary with his huge sword and ragged clothes, and then back at Aeris, as if seriosuly considering the idea.

Both women then burst out laughing.

"Cloud, dressed like a _woman_," Tifa said, shaking her head while laughing. "That's something I'd pay to see."

"Not happening," the mercenary muttered, frowning and looking back at the mansion. "We need to get in there, though . . . ." Cloud stood in silence for a moment, and then looked back at Tifa, before grunting.

"I hate to disagree with you Tifa, but I'm not feeling the patience for sneaking around, and I don't want to risk you or Aeris getting hurt. Plus, its not like he doesn't deserve it."

"Wait, Cloud!" Tifa began to say, and she considered stopping him more forcefully, as she had with Barret, but something stopped her. "We need to keep this quiet. We can't just bust in there!"

"Tifa," he said with a smile as he glanced back at her. "Quiet has its place, but this guy doesn't rate it." Without another word, he started toward the door. Tifa hesitated but followed after him, and Aeris quietly brought up the rear, not arguing with the mercenary's unexpected but decisive choice.

Cloud walked toward the guard in front of the door again, this time with two women in tow. The man glanced at the women and chuckled.

"Wow," he remarked as Cloud walked toward him. "That was fast, man."

Cloud didn't reply, instead glancing up at a blank spot on the wall of the building, blinking in surprise. The guard looked up in the direction Cloud was staring, but saw nothing but featureless wall. He glanced back toward Cloud and opened his mouth to ask what it was he was looking at, and saw nothing but a meaty black-gloved fist shooting into his face.

"In SOLDIER, we had a special term for unconscious guards," Cloud said as he grabbed stunned man by the front of his shirt. "They were called 'keys.'"

A second later, the door into Corneo's mansion was shattered open as Cloud hurled the unconscious guard through the gaudy wooden portal and strode into the center of the house. He glanced around the room and felt a sudden sense of unease within him. If he had any appreciable fashion sense, than the feeling he was experiencing would have been that screaming in protest at the gaudy interior. Opposing colors shined through bright neon lights, even more eye-hurting than the ones outside. The inside of the building was painted in garish colors, the expensive paneled wood transformed into hideous decoration. The lower level of the house was occupied by the main hallway, which included a staircase leading up to the right to a balcony ringing the entry hallway. Several doors were spaced along this balcony, including one massive, gaudily designed pair of double doors, directly above which was positioned a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. From somewhere inside the mansion, some godawful rap music was playing, seeming to have been custom-composed for the mansion as the verbal equivalent of the visual decadence inside the home.

"My eyes," wailed Aeris as she entered the room, Tifa a step behind her. Both women seemed almost repulsed by the interior of the chamber, and for good reason.

A shout of surprise from the double doors upstairs caught the intruders' attention, and they looked up in time to see them swing open. Emerging from the room beyond came a man who could only be Don Corneo. No one else could have designed this mansion, except the huge, fat slob of a man clad in what seemed to be almost a mockery of royal purple robes. Corneo's eyes were wide with shock, the cheap cigar he was smoking almost falling out of his mouth.Cloud focused on the man's head, amazed to see a solid gold crown on top of the Don's head, and what seemed to be almost a mile of gold and silver necklaces around his neck. The Don's fingers and hands shone with gems and gold as he put his hands on the railing, shocked to see the intruders and his ruined door.

"My door!" the Don screamed, face turning red. "I _liked_ that door! I really did!" He glared at the trio of intruders below, and then glanced toward another door along the balcony, from which were emerging a dozen thugs, clad in brown tank tops and black pants and brandishing sub-machineguns and pistols.

"Kotch!" Corneo shouted at one of the men, apparently the leader of his bodyguards. "These people, they fucked up my _door_!"

"And that's not all," Cloud answered with a snarl, drawing his sword.

"Wait a second!" Corneo exclaimed, suddenly realizing who he was dealing with. "You . . . You're that guy with . . . what are they called? ROCKSLIDE?"

"Close enough," Tifa muttered under her breath.

"Boss, if its them, then what do you think Shin-" Kotch began, but was cut off.

"Shut up!" Corneo shouted at Kotch. "Waste them! Waste all of them!" He paused, and then glanced at the two women, and a sick, lecherous smile cut over his features. "Um, actually, just kill the glowey prick. I want the women alive." Cloud stared at Corneo for a second, not believing what he had said, and then glanced at Tifa and Aeris, who were equally appalled. Corneo crossed his arms as several of his men leveled their weapons at the mercenary, and the other started down the stairs toward them, weapons in hand but not pointed at the intruders. The ex-SOLDIER turned back toward Corneo, growling to himself, and raised his sword in both hands. He dashed forward, even as the bodyguards up on the balcony opened fire. Bullets stormed down like rain, slamming into the floorboards around him and filling the air with their deafening retorts and flying wooden splinters.

However, the enemy's aim was as atrocious as the interior of Corneo's home, and only one shot struck Cloud, a grazing round that scratched down his back. His muscular legs pumped beneath him, and he crouched for an instant, before leaping up a dozen feet. The bodyguards started raising their weapons to follow him, but not expecting his surprisingly large leap, they stood open-mouthed as Cloud hit the balcony in front of Corneo, slamming down into the wooden platform. The Don yelped in absolute horror and shamed himself, a dark stain running down his expensive pants as he fell back into the office he had emerged from. The guards, shaking off their surprise, turned to pump a river of steel into Cloud, who could not dodge their gunfire in such cramped space.

Almost half of Corneo's guards were firing at Cloud, but the rest were closing in on the two women below. The seven men changed their grips on their weapons, holding them like clubs, and prepared to subdue the apparently unarmed women. They advanced confidently, grinning at the ease of their jobs, weapons ready. Tifa glanced back at Aeris as the flower seller reached into a pocket and pulled out her short, two-foot long rod.

"Watch my back?" she asked, and Aeris nodded confidently. Tifa, knowing she was secure, glanced back at her opponents, and slid into a high guard, both hands raised, weight balanced perfectly. One guard, who had studied a few martial arts in his life, paused, recognizing the stance, and was about to warn his comrades when Tifa jetted forward, leaping at her foes in an eye blink. Before the lead guard had a chance to react, she was in front of him, right leg shooting down into his knee like greased lightning. The thunderbolt shattered his knee, and most of his thigh and calf bones as well, into a dozen pieces, and he fell to the floor screaming. Tifa pivoted on her left leg, her right flying up in a deadly-fast arcing kick into the next guard's face. His head flew aside at an unnatural angle, and over the roar of gunfire above, the five remaining guards could hear the sickening snap of the man's neck. His lifeless body flew a dozen feet away, bouncing across the gaudy floor. As he hit the floor, Tifa heard the sound of safeties flicking off, and weapons moving into more lethal grips.

Respect was something that had to be earned, and in a single second, Tifa had earned it. The guards, realizing exactly how dangerous she was, started to raise their rifles at her.

A flash of flame shot into one man, a bolt of incineration that cored through his chest and launched him backward, and in the flash of light, Tifa leapt at her foes, left hand slapping down on a rifle to parry it aside while her right leg shattered another guard's face. Tifa spun at the guard whose rifle she had shoved aside and slammed a palm into his temple. The impact shattered parts of his skull, but the real power in the blow dove through the weakened part of his bones, directly into the man's brain and crushing it against the other side of his skull. He fell like a sack of bricks. Behind his falling body, however, was another guard, pistol leveled directly at her chest. He depressed the trigger, and the pistol kicked.

As Tifa was battling the guard in close-quarters melee, Aeris looked for another target. However, her next foe came to her, one guard circling around the melee. Seeing Aeris relatively unarmed, he leapt toward her, intending to club her with his rifle. The weapon's buttstock rose, and Aeris pointed her rod at him. She squeezed the rod, and a faint click could be heard within. The guard suddenly felt a heavy weight slam into his chest as the two-foot long rod became a six-foot-long quarterstaff. He stumbled backward, and Aeris took a quick step forward, shifting her weight, and the staff flew across, the opposite end clubbing him across the side of his head and throwing him off his feet, unconscious by the surprisingly strong blow.

Cloud couldn't avoid the weapons aimed at him, so he didn't bother. He charged straight toward his foes, who, while out of reach of most melee weapons, were well within range of his massive sword. The heavy blade flashed from right to left in a single mighty swing, and two of the bodyguards, trapped on the balcony with nowhere to flee, broke apart like fragile pieces of glass. The sword slammed into the wooden wall as the two men fall apart and to the floorboards, and the soldiers behind them stared in shock. With a flex of his muscles and a ripping, splintering crash of broken wood, Cloud tore his sword free and shot ahead, blade crashing down upon another man, splitting him from left shoulder to right hip.

The rest had no intention of firing as Cloud stormed toward them and tried to flee. But Cloud struck hard and fast, and their fleeing, terrified legs could not save them from his wrath. His sword flew out wide, a body's disparate parts chasing it, and it slashed down again, cleaving another man in half. His left arm shot ahead, grabbing another guard by the wrist, and he spun, spiking the man into the floorboards as if he were a rag doll, following with his boot to the guard's upper back.

The instant before the guard aiming at Tifa fired, she ducked and twisted her body aside. The bullet flew toward her, and then past her, barely missing her body as she danced out of the line of fire. He desperate dodge, however, also cleared the way for Aeris. Behind Tifa, the green glow of Aeris' materia flared up a second time, and flakes of snow began to swarm around her as she pointed her rod at the man pointing his pistol at Tifa. Blue-white light erupted from the small rod and slammed into him, picking him up and launching him away as the magic flash-froze his body, killing him instantly.

Silence filled the interior of the gaudy mansion, punctuated only by the whimpering of the man with the broken leg. Tifa kicked him in the side of the head with her boot, knocking him out, and glanced up to the gore-splattered walkway where Cloud had massacred Corneo's guards. The ex-SOLDIER tapped his sword against the wall, knocking some of the blood off of it, and turned toward the door leading into Corneo's office.

"Let's get this over with," he grunted, and the two women nodded. They started up the steps, carefully avoiding the blood and broken bodies Cloud had left behind, and followed him as he smashed through the door into Corneo's office with a single kick.

The office was worse then the rest of the house put together. The gaudy orange, red, and violet colors, combined with shiny neon lights and the vast overpopulation of Wutai kanji on every surface assaulted the trio's eyes, but they failed to see the madman behind this decorating atrocity. Only a wall of hanging beads barred the way to a room beyond the office, which Cloud promptly defeated with wave of his hands as he passed through the door into Corneo's bedroom.

At least the bedroom was darker, though the gleaming disco ball overhead was annoyingly glittery. The room was dominated by the Don's massive four-post bed, and the bed's owner was cowering under the sheets, shaking violently. Cloud calmly walked over to the criminal and tore the sheets off of him. Corneo screamed in terror and fell back, gibbering in terror.

"Why?" he managed. "Why are you-"

"Shut up," Cloud growled. "We're asking the questions now." He grabbed the front of the Don's shirt with one hand, and lifted his sword with the other. "And if you don't start answering them, I'll chop _them_ off."

"'Them?'" Corneo echoed, and he suddenly squealed in horror as he put his hands over his crotch protectively. "Oh no! Not that! Anything but that! Please! You can take an arm, or a leg, but not the Trouser Titan!"

"Good," Cloud replied, nodding. He didn't release Corneo, however, instead spearing him with those terrible blue glowing eyes of his. "Now, AVALANCHE. Why are you so interested in us?"

"I was ordered to find the man with the gun-arm, that's all, I swear!" Corneo explained.

"Who?" Tifa demanded, stepping up to Corneo's bed, joining in on the interrogation.

"If I tell you I'll be killed!" he responded, shaking his head in fear.

"I'll make it a whole lot worse," Tifa replied. She reached up, grabbed one of the bed posts, and pulled, focusing her _ki_. The wood splintered and snapped, and the top half of the bedpost broke off. "If you don't talk, I'll _rip_ it off."

"No no no no!" Corneo wailed. "It was Heidegger! Ernst Heidegger of the Public Safety Department! He wanted to know where the gun-armed man was!"

"Shinra!" Cloud snarled, clutching Corneo's shirt even tighter, ripping threads. "Why? Are they planning an attack?" Corneo closed his eyes and wailed in terror.

"If I talk, they'll torture me, they promised! They'll have the Turks rip out my fingernails and my eyes and my teeth and . . . ."

"Too bad," Aeris suddenly said, and extended her rod. "I'll take the most important part off first by smashing it to paste." Cloud glanced at her, surprised by her sudden and unexpected entry into the interrogation. While he didn't believe for an instant she'd actually do it, Corneo, the moron he was, fell for the threat, as his scream of fear attested.

"They're going to crush the entire Sector!" he shouted. "Literally! They're blowing the support pillar holding up Sector Seven and are going to wipe out the entire slum!"

"_What?"_ Tifa exclaimed. "Shinra's going to destroy the whole Sector?"

"Yes! Thank God those fools aren't in Sector Six!" Corneo began to say. "Said they'd drop the entire Sector in the next hour! . . . please don't kill me." Cloud snarled and, deciding that the Don had earned his life at least, released him.

"Thanks," he grunted. Corneo said nothing, wisely understanding that being silent would keep him intact. However, Cloud decided not to let the Don go without parting shot. His right hand balled into a fist, which shot forward and smashed the Don's nose, launching him off the bed and against the back wall.

"Let's get the hell out of here and stop Shinra," Cloud growled and Aeris and Tifa agreed. The trio hurried out of the decadent mansion and back out into the slums as fast as they could.

* * *

Alexander Shinra sat back in his chair, cigar smoking in his mouth, as he regarded the video screen in front of him, set into his massive steel desk, and the young blonde man displayed on one of the dozens of video screens here, in the nexus of his network that spanned the entire globe. 

"Father, this is an insane plan," Rufus Shinra, Alexander's only son, stated. "Dropping Sector Seven to kill a small band of rebels? Do you have any idea how much this will cost?"

"Very much so," Alexander replied, puffing his cigar. "The costs are worth the extensive benefits we will reap. Midgar will know the true terror that these rebels can inflict, especially considering we're blaming this on them. We've even arranged to let the information slip, so that AVALANCHE will desperately try to save Sector Seven from this catastrophe. Sadly, the rebels were able to destroy the platform through insanely suicidal means. This will be precedent to tighten our control over the slums and increase Mako rates to ensure such a disaster will never happen again."

"One seventh of our Midgar income will be lost!" Rufus responded. "That's almost the equivalent of all of Junon! How can you make up for that?"

"Rufus, you know we've been searching for someone very special, correct?" Alexander said, seeming to change the subject.

"A very special person?" Rufus asked, his tone indicating that he knew just how special this person was. Alexander nodded.

"Neo-Midgar will soon be a reality, son," Alexander said, with a predatory smile. "And once that has been realized, even Midgar will be nothing more than a mere bauble in our crown."

"I see," Rufus muttered, nodding.

"After AVALANCHE is . . . crushed," Alexander said with a widening grin. "No one will dare oppose us, the citizenry of Midgar will be even more loyal to us, and we will tighten our control and profits. Nothing but good will come out of this."

"Still, it seems such a waste, Father," Rufus complained.

"Allow me to handle business here in Midgar," Alexander replied. "You've still got issues in Junon, correct?"

Rufus nodded reluctantly, and the video screen went blank. Shinra stood, puffing his cigar again, as the green-clad, bearded form of Ernst Heidegger strode into his office, smiling like a wolf on the prowl.

"The assault's underway, Mr. President," Heidegger, the head of the Shinra armed forces and one of the three most powerful people in the world, reported.

"The rescue crews are standing by?" Shinra asked, and Heidegger nodded.

"Ready to see what survivors they can pull out of the catastrophe AVALANCHE has inflicted," Heidegger answered with another bout of laughter. Shinra joined in the mirth. He crossed his massive office on the top floor of the huge Shinra skyscraper and looked out over the -no, _his_ - metropolis, continuing to laugh quietly to himself, all the while puffing on his cigar.

Things were looking up.

* * *

-

* * *

Obviously,I cut out the entire sequence involving the cross-dressing infiltration of Corneo's lair. While it is amusing, I decided that it was too drawn out and tedious for this story, and it just didn't fit the tone of this part of the story as well. Not to mention that Cloud in drag is a rather silly sight, even for me :P I'm also cutting out the trainyard crawl, mostly because it woukld get in the way of narration and was really nothing more than a sewer and train graveyard filled with random encounters, and served no storyline purpose. I really just want to get on with the action here. 

Also, there are no mentions of Squall or any other FFVIII character in this chapter. They will all die in their tanks. I did not edit this chapter's false errors, nor did I copy paste segments from Synthesis because I'm lazy. I am not poking fun at the Iraqi Minister of Information. It is all a Hollywood movie!

Until next chapter...


End file.
